


Force Ghost: The Ultimate Spectator Sport or  Through A Glass, Dimly.

by Lightbringer34



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Force Ghost Anakin Skywalker, M/M, Unoriginal Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:54:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23015848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lightbringer34/pseuds/Lightbringer34
Summary: Most Force Ghosts didn’t bother concerning themselves with the living. Peering across the Cosmic Force took a great deal of effort, visibly manifesting even more so. The Chosen One has no such compunctions. He’d always been a selfish sort of Jedi anyway.In which Anakin Skywalker enjoys the spectator sport of annoying his descendants and  I try  to salvage something from JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson's squabbling. Still not sure how I feel about Kylo/Ben.Updates Sundays, likely sooner.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa & Anakin Skywalker, Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker & Han Solo, Leia Organa/Han Solo, Poe Dameron/Finn
Comments: 11
Kudos: 92





	1. Endor Celebrations Require Toothpicks

Most Force Ghosts didn’t bother concerning themselves with the living. Peering across the Cosmic Force took a great deal of effort, visibly manifesting even more so. The Chosen One had no such compunctions. He’d always been a selfish sort of Jedi anyway.

His first appearance to Luke and his nameless sister was that classic mix of Skywalker pride and arrogance. Pride in his children who had destroyed the last of the Sith, truly and completely, including himself. Pride in their growth, in their happiness, at the beings surrounding them in celebration in-

What are those?

He’d chosen to appear as Anakin Skywalker, the young handsome Jedi Knight with flowing hair and sharp cheekbones, but his face which had been beaming with pride was now twisted in confusion. 

“You are seeing this, right?”

He turned to his Master, Obi-Wan as serene as ever, and Yoda cackling merrily. They turned to look back at him.

“The triumph of the Jedi is a beautiful thing, is it not, Anakin? I admit I didn’t think it possible, but Luke has done some truly incredible things with our training. Bringing you back was a task I thought impossible, especially after our last encounter.”

Anakin had the grace to look ashamed, but shook his head. “You can guilt me about killing you for the rest of eternity Obi-Wan, are you seeing these?”  
He waved a blue hand at the hundreds of small, fuzzy, teddy bears, partying alongside the Rebels.  
“These are teddy bears, Master. Bears! What are they doing here?”

“Making sport of your stormtroopers, they are!” cackled Grandmaster Yoda, as the ghosts turned to see a small brown creature carrying a large stack of helmets, some bearing the markings of the 501st Legion, what had been Vader’s Fist. 

Anakin stared, torn between indignation and amusement. He’d fought with the 501st through the Clone Wars, Operation Knightfall, and multiple campaigns across the Empire. Rex was across the clearing, alongside the Rebels, thank the Force, but the 501st was…

The intermingling opinions of Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker made for…confusing recollection. He felt pride in the 501st even as memories of campaigns made him feel sick to his nonexistant stomach.

“Rex’s legacy…” he heard himself say, before trailing off. Ok. Ok, ok, ok. Bongos.  
Bongos out of the helmets of defeated Imperial forces. That was pretty funny.

He began to laugh again and Obi-Wan joined in, his image flickering between the old man he had died as and they young Jedi Master he’d known for most of what Anakin was already calling his Good Life. Yoda, still as ancient-looking as the day Anakin had first met him, continued cackling in glee. For a few moments, all was right in the world and in the Force.

Then the Ewoks lifted the helmets away and cheered. The laughter stopped in short order. As did the celebrations among the immediate Rebels.

Those weren’t empty helmets. Those were heads.

Ewoks rushed the helmet-bearer, who quickly fell and caused a mad dash among the diminutive bear-beings for both the helmets and the heads inside them. There seemed to be no clear difference between the heads, but Anakin could see the cries of shock and then silence spread in waves among the Rebel Alliance even as the Ewok’s cheering and drums reached new heights of celebration. 

Three of the bears rushed over to his daughter and to C-3PO, bowing and offering his daughter and his protocol droid the heads in tones of great ceremony. She spun, eyes wide to Threepio.

“Please tell me what’s going on here.”

The Force Ghosts listened intently as the Protocol Droid chattered back and forth with the chieftain in the Ewok’s primitive language as the bear repeatedly shoved a steaming human head into the poor droid’s hands.

“Oh dear, Mistress Leia, please, please take it away! Oh, it’s horrible, I can’t bear to look.”

“Threepio.” Incredibly, Leia’s voice was calm as she accepted a squarish Scout helmet from her dark brown, furry admirer. (Not the smuggler, he was pressed back into Chewbacca, who in turn looked thoroughly bored with the whole ordeal.)

“-oil baths days to get the little pieces out of my-oh, it just doesn’t bear thinking about!”  
“Threepio!” Luke and Leia didn’t quite shout the protocol droid’s name, but they’d said it in unison and with emphasis, which seemed to break him out of his trance. “What are they saying?”

“Chieftan Wirkut says it has long been customary for tribes to collect the heads of their fallen foes to strengthen the knowledge of the tribe. Eyes for far-sight, tongues for-“ despite not having the servos to do so, the droid seemed to shudder. “Please don’t ask me to translate this, Master Luke, I beg you.”

“Just tell us if we can refuse these without getting thrown on that fire pit again!” shouted Han. 

“What do you mean, again?” said Anakin, indignant.

Luke glanced his way, but the three Force Ghosts were now pointedly staying out of the visible spectrum as they looked on in a mixture of horror and amusement. 

“Oh, I shall forbid it immediately, as their God, of course!” exclaimed Threepio, who communicated this to the Ewoks in a voice that somehow managed to sound terribly put-upon (normal for his protocol droid) and the basso profundo of what a Deity might sound like, if it spoke using a chittering, murderous, teddy bear language.

Many of the Ewoks let out groans of disappointment and some of the older ones with more grey in their fur actually started to object, shaking their sticks or fists at Threepio. The members of the Rebel Alliance swiftly discarded their own macabre souvenirs. In the distance, Anakin saw Solo kick a still-occupied helmet off into the trees and wipe his hands on the Wookie, who growled in protest.

“Hey, you said you were fine with it, I’m the one who’s not used to Imperial blood literally on my hands.” Argued Han, looking at his own with a sense of disgust. “Now I really need a freaking drink.”

Artoo took that as his cue to roll over to the Alliance leaders, mixed wooden and durasteel mugs of foaming, potent alcohol balanced on top of his dome or clutched in his pincers. Even Luke breathed a sigh of relief and took one. Anakin felt his eyebrows raise as his daughter drained her first mug almost as fast as the Wookie and nodded in affirmation.

Luke looked back in the direction of the Force Ghosts, his expression alternating between disturbed and close to hysterical laughter. It had been a very emotionally trying day for his son, and the sight of his redeemed father and former masters watching him try to juggle a Lieutenant’s severed head and a mug of ale would have broken him completely. Anakin took pity on him.

“I think that’s our cue to leave, don’t you?”

Now looking much more grave, Obi-Wan nodded and faded away into the Cosmic Force. Yoda cackled again and licked his lips. 

That night, Anakin Skywalker made the discovery that Force Ghosts could not actually puke, no matter how much he wanted to.


	2. A Bad First Impression

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anakin reaches out to Leia, who has some things to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so this chapter's got way less comedy and a bunch of angst, but Anakin's got plenty of blood on his hands to answer for. Getting it out there now, to make room for more shenanigans.

As it turned out, being a Force Ghost was both relaxing and exhausting.

Sure, he could passively drift along the currents of the Cosmic Force, dimly aware of the events of the living and luxuriate in the presence of other Jedi, of his wife Padmé, and spend his eternity with Obi-Wan reminiscing about the Good Times.

But that would have been cowardly. And it was easy. Anakin Skywalker had many faults, that he was as dumb as a bantha, as brutish as a rancor, and was complicit in the deaths of children, (Padmé had really torn into him) but he wasn’t a coward.

So Anakin Skywalker resisted the gentle tug of the Cosmic Force and focused his attention on his daughter.

Luke’s sister.

Oh, the dark satisfaction he’d had on the Death Star at that realization, that Luke was not the only one left, was not in fact his last chance for redemption, that his son’s death at the hands of the Emperor could in turn be the catalyst for a new relationship in the Dark Side with Leia Skywalker née Organa.

It had been something of a shock then, when he realized that Luke did still matter to him, that the boy wasn’t just another promising apprentice who could be thrown to Palpatine’s nonexistent mercies. Watching his son writhe as Force Lightning coursed through his body and remembering the countless incidents he’d endured the same pain.

Pain from Dooku, who cut off his hand and electrocuted him so many times across the Clone Wars he had lost sensation in the tips of his remaining limbs. Pain from Sidious himself, who admonished Vader for his failings even as he threw the Dark Lord into situations which invited more failure and yet more punishment, his company the scant reward in a galaxy devoid of companionship and steadily-dwindling Force-sensitives.

When his son had offered him that same companionship freely, and begged for his help, even now, after everything…

Well, compared to that experience, it really shouldn’t be so hard to speak with his daughter.

“You’re stalling.”

Though he knew who it was, Anakin whirled around to see Obi-Wan watching him from a tree stump, legs curled in a meditative pose as if he’d been there the last thousand years.

“I-I have no idea what to say to her.”

He mimed a jaunty wave, the kind he’d given to Obi-Wan, Ashoka, and Artoo a dozen times over and shrugged.

“What, just say ‘hey, I’m your father who tortured you and stood by while your real family was blown to atomized carbon? Or maybe I should lead with ‘I chopped off your brother’s hand and sealed your boyfriend in carbonite.’ That’ll really get her excited to meet Anakin Skywalker.”

“Start with showing up, tell you who you are, then come back here. Give her time. You’re not going anywhere.”

“No, but-“

“Anakin, you have to start somewhere. You don’t get to avoid justice just by dying.”

“Most people do.”

“Most people aren’t the Chosen One.”

Anakin began pacing in circles around Obi-Wan’s stump, while his Master continued to feign at meditation.

“You still think that was about me? I thought it was about Luke? He’s the one who brought balance, he’s the one who saved me.”

“And in turn, you saved yourself, saved him, saved the entire galaxy. You destroyed the Sith.”

“I also destroyed the Jedi.”

“Yes. You’re still stalling.”

Anakin Skywalker, the Hero With No Fear, Darth Vader, Scourge of a Thousand Systems, groaned and buried his face in his hands. The two ghosts looked through the trees at the young woman sitting on a log with an enormous Wookee and tucking into a skewered grox leg.

“Here goes nothing.”

_______________________________

General Leia Organa was grateful to be out of action, for once. With so much to do after the destruction of the Death Star and the death of the Empire’s top two megalomaniacal murderers, some peace and quiet in the forests of Endor was a nice change of pace. While she normally thrived in the thick of action, issuing orders and distributing supplies, there was something about the vast, vibrant trees of Endor that made her jaw loosen, her shoulders drop, and slowly unwound the tension she’d accumulated every single moment of her life since joining her father’s Rebel Alliance. Well, not her biological father, Luke had implied as much before-

Something blue flickered into being in front of her, then just as quickly vanished. Leia put the meat skewer between her teeth and drew her blaster, aiming with both hands at the sight of the flicker. Chewbacca roared something that was clearly a question, but he didn’t seem overly alarmed. There were still scattered Imperial stormtroopers across the continent, which is why she’d brought Chewie along on this quiet lunch as Han had insisted, but-

That flicker again and she fired a blaster bolt at the thing, which ignored it completely, even as the bolt flew through it and detonated against the trunk of a 264-year-old wroshyrr tree. Chewie had his own bowcaster out now, scanning the tree line for hostiles now, growling.

“Okay, so maybe this wasn’t the best idea.”

A wry voice seemed to emanate from the forest itself as Leia spun in a circle, seeking a target. “Chewie, did you hear that voice?”

The Wookie growled then shook his head, he’d heard nothing.

“Alright, then, who are you?” called Leia in as clear a voice as she could manage.

A sigh emanated from the trees and the wind whistled through the undergrowth along with it. For a moment it was as if the forest itself was sighing alongside the stranger, wherever he might have hidden himself. Leia tried again.

“I am a member of the Rebel Alliance. If you are an Imperial soldier, surrender your weapon and holoprojector and I promise we will treat you fairly. Darth Vader is gone, the Emperor is gone. You don‘t need to be afraid anymore.”

The blue flicker in the forest returned, sputtering several times like a bad holo, before it resolved into a man in dark robes, his hands held up in the universal sign for “I surrender”.

“I’m afraid that’s unlikely, Leia Organa. It’s not every day I get to meet my daughter for the first time.”

He attempted a smile, but it was weak and she could see the fear still shining through. He wasn’t afraid of the blaster she had pointed at him, but something about her…

Leia shook her head and turned to Chewbacca. “Chewie, go meet our visitor and handcuff him, it’s less likely he’ll try something against a Wookie.”

Chewbacca gave another questioning grunt and a shrug. He still didn’t see anything. Leia turned back, exasperated. “What do you mean, you can’t see him, he’s bright blue and standing right the-“

The man was gone.

She spun in a circle, pistol up and steady, scanning the treeline. “Where in the blazes did he go? Chewie, radio Base One and get a squad out here, something’s wrong!”

“Does something feel wrong?” the voice asked, still slightly amused.

“Reach out with your feelings, sense your surroundings, and you will know where I am.”

Something about his tone made her stop and tune out Chewbacca’s growls into the comm. That sounded like something Luke would say when he was attempting to explain the Force to her. Because he was a newly minted Jedi Knight, she wasn’t sure if his explanations made things easier or more confusing.

“Are-are you a Jedi?” she asked the forest.

“Yes. And No.” said the voice.

“Look, I’d appreciate a straight answer for once, okay?” said Leia, now thoroughly annoyed. “I’ve been managing diplomatic calls, search parties, and troop deployments for the past three days, trying to track down the rest of Vader’s damn 501st and whoever you are, you just interrupted the only half hour I had to relax! Now show yourself, before I have Y-Wings flush you out.

Another blue flicker, right in the center of her vision, she couldn’t possibly have missed him.

“I see you take after me more than your mother”

She lowered the pistol, as the man in the robes appeared once more, hands on his hips, and looking at her with open fondness on his face, so similar to Luke’s-

It clicked.

“You’re Darth Vader?”

He looked down at the ground.

“And Anakin Skywalker. I am your father.”

After a statement like that, of course, she had to shoot him.

Anakin ducked as Leia emptied the power cell of her blaster into the trees behind him, a lifetime of combat instincts commanding him to move, even as he knew he was no longer capable of being harmed. The part of him that had been a General and later a Naval Commander and Chief Officer of the Executor noted her shot placement, a clean spread of three through his chest, then a further five following his motion as he ducked, two through his head, and the remaining forty-four around his position in general.

“I understand-“

A log was blasted in half.

“You never knew-“

A low-hanging branch burst into flames.

“The first time-“

The underbrush around him was nearly gone.

“Did you ever hear the tragedy-“

Chewbacca’s bowcaster bolt passed through him, ricocheted off two trees and embedded itself in the ground.

“Alright, I’ll wait.”

He disappeared from sight, but watched silently. To her credit, it took Leia a solid fifteen minutes to calm down, her face a grimace of bared teeth, naked rage, and tear tracks.

“YOU TOOK ALDERAAN FROM ME!” she screamed at the trees.

“YOU TOOK MY FATHER, TOOK EVERYTHING! YOU TRIED TO TAKE LUKE, BECAUSE EVEN THAT WASN’T ENOUGH, WAS IT? YOU MONSTER!”

From the tree-stump, Obi Wan gave him The Look.

“Alright, alright, I’ll show myself. This reaction is pretty justified.”

“Entirely justified” said his master, primly.

Meanwhile, Leia was still listing off his litany of crimes, which were many and varied.

“-Half of the Delegation of Two Thousand, disappeared within five years of Empire Day!

Sixteen Quaithe Force-Sensitives publicly executed! How dare you show your face to me, how are you even doing this?”

Anakin glanced at Obi-Wan. “How am I doing this Master?”

“By accepting your death as a natural part of the Living Force, and attaining spiritual enlightenment that has allowed your consciousness to be able to manifest within the world of the living. Be grateful the Force didn’t see fit to stick you in a krayt dragon.”

His apprentice’s silence told him how useful that answer was. Anakin had always been a practical man, less prone to theological discussion than Master Yoda. Obi wan simplified further.

“You’re too worried about your children, so now you can stick around and watch them grow up.”

Now that made more sense to Anakin, who smirked in response. “So the loving, compassionate qualities that made me a bad Jedi now put me on par with the very best of the Jedi?”

“It's not only compassion that-just get back in there and face your daughter, Anakin.”

Leia had finally run out of crimes after five minutes and was panting as she stared at the trees. Chewie was keeping as quiet as possible and silently hoping Luke and Han would show up to help stop his friend from screaming at nothing. Anakin took another deep breath and materialized in front of her once more.

“Leia, I’m sorry. This can’t make up for Alderaan, or Bail, Master Kenobi, or all the others I’ve hurt. Your mother and I never wanted this, for you or anyone. Once the Clone Wars were over, or when you were born, I was going to resign my position as a Jedi to help raise you. Things just-“ He gestured helplessly, because words could not express the fear, tension, and pain of the final days of the Clone Wars. “Things went out of control. I went out of control. The thing I was so afraid of happening to me without the Jedi Code’s restrictions happened anyway and ruined any chance for my life with you. Now I’m dead and the galaxy is free of me, if not the consequences of my mistakes.”

Leia’s glare did not relent, but it softened a little and at least she wasn’t pointing the pistol at him. “What could have possibly happened that made you help the Emperor create and control thousands of star systems? Like you said, you could have walked away at any time.”

Anakin grimaced. “Bail Organa taught you well. You know how to ask the right questions, even if it makes answering them a real pain in the-“

“So give me an answer and quit stalling.”

“Your mother was going to die. Every night I had dreams of her death on the operating table, on the run, in pain. Supreme Chancellor Palpatine said he could use the Dark Side of the Force to save her, to save you. When the Jedi Council tried to kill him instead of a trial, I made my choice, to the ruin of us all.”

Leia stared at him. “That’s it? You had a few bad dreams and decided to become a tyrannical dictator?”

“I did what I thought would keep my family safe from the war and the Jedi Council. By the time I had regrets, I’d lost three more limbs thanks to Master Kenobi and had been sealed into the life-support apparatus you knew as my face.”

“Master Kenobi was trying to protect the galaxy from you, and the Jedi were selfless keepers of the peace! The Empire’s been spreading lies about them from the very beginning and you went along with it all.”

“Many of those lies were true,” said Anakin shortly. He’d crossed his arms as Leia had stalked towards him during her rebuttal. “The Jedi had fallen far from the Light and refused to admit their own faults. Pong Krell’s massacre of my men on Umbara, the Temple Bombing by Bariss Offee, attempted assassination of numerous Separatist leaders. I was made a Jedi Knight soon after the Clone Wars broke out as were many other Padawans, before we were truly ready. Your stories called us keepers of the peace, but the Clone Wars lasted for seven years. By the end, we were generals and soldiers, escalating conflict in the name of the Republic, just to bring peace. Not so different a philosophy from the Empire.”

“A peace built upon graveyards!”

Anakin nodded in agreement. “That was my point. When the difference between Light and Dark becomes that thin, stepping across it does not seem so grave a sin. Beings can justify a great many things if they believe their cause was just. The Rebellion is no different. Just look up Saw Gerurra's history.”

Leia wasn’t surprised. “A well-known partisan operating outside of the Rebellion’s command structure and a dangerous radical long before he fought under our banner.”

A fond smile spread across the Force Ghost’s face as he recalled those sunny days on Onderon. “My Padawan and I first trained him to fight for the Republic, you know? Not something Mon Mothma or the Empire’s propaganda would tell you. Anyway, we’re getting off the subject here. You wanted to know what happened to me, not debate the political structure of the galaxy.”

“If we did debate it, I’d win. No torture droid to tip the scales for you this time Lord Vader.”

“I’d prefer if you called me Anakin Skywalker.”

“Why should I?”

Anakin was fighting to not roll his eyes. His daughter certainly was just as obstinate, blunt, and thick-headed as he was and he could _feel_ Obi-Wan’s smirk somewhere behind him.

“It’s the name I was born with, and it’s the one I died with.” He said simply. “If you don’t want to call me Father, I understand. Now, will you sit?”

He moved over to the log Leia had been occupying beforehand and sat, which was a disconcerting experience. He could feel the texture of the log through his robes, but also knew he didn’t have to and no clue _how_ he knew that. Being a ghost would take some getting used to.

Leia remained standing, lower lip pushed out just like Padme’s used to do when they’d argue. “I’ll stay here, thanks. And Bail Organa was more of a father to me than you ever were. Don’t try to take his place now.”

Anakin held up his hands. “I didn’t plan on that, just-“ he ran his hands through his hair. “I wanted to start over, get to know you better. You don’t have to put my past aside, but you deserve to know the full story, what I was like before I made myself a slave _again_.” He said this last word with some bitterness as Leia mulled it over in silence.

Chewbacca barked something at her which had her smiling weakly. “No Chewie, I’m not insane. I’m just having a difficult conversation with someone who-apparently-is invisible to most people.”

“Sorry about that, I’m still working out the details of being a ghost.”

“He says he’s sorry.”

Chewie mumbled something that had Leia turn to him. “Can I tell him who you are?”

Anakin’s face split in a grin of satisfaction. “Tell him I’m Anakin Skywalker, see what reaction you get.”

The moment she did so, Chewbacca doubled over with the short barks that were the Wookie version of laughter and Leia turned back to the Force Ghost with raised eyebrows.

“The Hero With No Fear? That’s seriously what they called you?”

Anakin’s reaction was torn between a smile and a grimace, which twisted up his face into something almost painfully open and vulnerable. “Life’s more messy than the holoprograms, Leia, though they came up with enough monikers during the War to fill a drama series. Even then, I felt like I was a slave to propaganda. Always the Hero, always the face of the Jedi Order, then Sidious made me his puppet in turn. My death was the first moment in a long time I felt free.”

At that, Leia hesitated. She’d been under Darth Vader’s thumb before, during that torture session in the Death Star and she’d never heard an ounce of emotion through that flat, artificial tone. Comparing him to the man sitting on the log…She gave in and moved to sit next to him.

“As I said before, you could have stood up, stopped what he the Emperor was doing. If you were as powerful and popular as those titles made you sound, why not? Other people did, and they had families to care for. You only learned about Luke two years ago, after the first Death Star.” She shuddered, “that’s when you started hunting us across the galaxy.”

“Yes, that’s when I had something to live for. Knowing Luke was alive, that a Skywalker existed, gave me purpose. Before that…” He looked at his hands.

“It’s a terrible thing to be a slave Leia and I’m glad neither you or Luke ever had to experience it. Explosive chips in your head, a remotely controlled life support system, the only other Force-wielder in the galaxy, whatever the mechanism. People like Palpatine always find ways to control you. Before Luke, I had no reason to try to be free. I’d ruined my own life and I thought living in it was enough punishment on its own. Ay joy I could find then was based around the pain of others. I wasn’t a pleasant person to be around.”

That was his biggest understatement yet. Alliance Intel had long lists of the number of senior officers or stormtroopers Vader had casually killed for some minor infraction. But Anakin was still talking.

“Now I have a chance to be the man Anakin Skywalker failed to become, who Darth Vader could never be. I’d like to get to know you and Luke, just a bit, if you’ll let me. Beyond Imperial files and daring escapes. How does that sound?” He looked over at her hopefully.

Leia met his gaze and thought.

Invisible to them both, Obi-Wan crossed his fingers.

“Okay, fine. I’d like to know more about my mother, first. I only have a few vague impressions of her.”

The sound of snapping branches and shouts cut her off, but Anakin’s smile outshone the sun. He reached for her hand then visibly thought better of it. “That sounds like my cue to go. Can’t have everyone thinking the leader of the Rebel Alliance has lost it right? But for starters, look up the name Padmé Amidala, that should give you enough questions. See you around!”

He gave her a jaunty salute and vanished from the log as Luke, Han, and two dozen rebel troopers rushed into the clearing with blasters drawn. Leia’s reaction was volcanic.

“That blasted-“

One clearing and two planes of reality away, Anakin was quietly chuckling as Obi-Wan looked on in amusement. “I think that went rather well, don’t you Master?”

“A good place to start.”

Back in the clearing, Leia had sent the troops hunting for the Imperial spy and turned to Luke and Han with a mixture of wonder, frustration, and amusement.

“So I think I met our father…”

Unnoticed by the others, Chewbacca dusted off the long-abandoned meat, shrugged, and resumed eating. No use in letting it go to waste.


	3. Desperately Seeking Skywalker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke and Leia set about the business of fixing the galaxy, R2-D2 has receipts, and Anakin tries something stupid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's more of a connector chapter, but there's so much to talk about I had to split things up. I know there's a Force Netherworld that Force Ghosts go to beyond death, as part of the Cosmic Force, which I'm assuming is where regular people go. It's just too unbearable to think that only sufficiently advanced Sith or Jedi get a chance to have an afterlife separate from the Cosmic Force, so I tweaked it. It's all Legends anyway, stuff the question of Canon.
> 
> Canon is malleable like clay. It's like pottery/poetry, it rhymes."-George Lucas, probably.

R2-D2 had proven to be a data-stack of information on Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala and had provided Leia, Luke, and a morbidly curious Han with hundreds of hours of recorded footage of the second most famous Senator from Naboo and the Jedi Knight. Why he’d never divulged it to her father or herself before, Leia couldn’t begin to guess, but she was glad to have it. Days spent huddled in the newly reopened Senate chamber or around a desk with Mon Mothma, General Dodanna, and the representatives of six massive blocs of systems to hammer out a new galactic government was exhausting. With Han and Luke blasting around the galaxy acting as representatives of the “New Republic”, Leia found evenings with R2 to be a fascinating diversion.

Video of her mother passionately defending the values of the Republic on everything from tax rates to the funding of additional clone forces drove her on even as her own struggles became more byzantine and ever-more focused on the minutae of government. How much power should Senate subcomittees have to reign in the Chancellor’s decisions on their specific matters? Could the Kuat Drive shipyards be refitted to make something other than Star Destroyers? How to ensure the Republic courts were accessible to even the poorest farmer on an Outer Rim world?

Artoo’s videos also showed her mother’s own exhaustion with the politics of her day, the moments when she literally let her hair down in the privacy of her own chambers. There were a surprisingly large number of scenes with her father, sneaking away from the Jedi Temple apparently, or finding one pretext or another to meet her. Leia could admit that the younger version of her father was dashing, often joking and cheerful to bring his wife out from temporary despair. Though one of his hands, just like Luke’s was mechanical, the tenderness in his actions was surprising to Leia, but she soon began to understand. They had dearly loved each other, even as the stresses of their positions slowly tore them apart.

Anakin, a general, was so often frustrated with the debate in the Senate and wished for direct, visible action to help his men and the Republic win the war faster. Padmé was all for dialogue and conversation, investigation and debate, though a few clips showed her in the middle of firefights too. As months passed between recorded meetings she could see her parents change as they grew older. Anakin’s casual jokes ran out and he became aggrieved, quick to anger or frustration, Padmé grew more and more disillusioned with the measures put forth by the Senate as she saw the values she held dear ignored or trampled upon in the interests of victory. Artoo only showed her one real argument between her parents, concerning a banker named Rush Clovis, and that was all she needed to see. Padmé and Anakin had clung to each other like a lifeboat in a storm, but as the end of the war neared, their relationship might not have survived. Perhaps raising their children would have brought back their happiness in a galaxy at peace, perhaps not. But Artoo proved to be an excellent editor, for he’d saved the best for last.

Video of their wedding day, at a small summer house on Naboo, her mother in white lace and her father in the eternally understated Jedi robes, with tentative but radiant smiles as they exchanged vows. Despite herself, despite knowing who and what Darth Vader would become, Leia found herself smiling as Artoo shut down the holoprojector.

“Artoo, that was…a good perspective. Thank you for sharing it with me.”

She kept it in mind as a few months passed and the frenzy of activity stabilized into the slow but steady work of reorganizing the galaxy. Imperial remnants were literally legion, each Moff declaring himself (and it was always a he) the new Emperor of whatever tiny pocket of space he controlled. Artoo had videos for this too, mostly of Anakin’s own experiences or planning sessions during the Clone Wars. Tactics for storming a control tower while minimizing the chance of harming the civilian populace below, deep-freezing a strike force in carbonite to sneak past sensors (she could barely bring herself to watch that one), and more. She knew how plans could change on the battlefield and even with her own experience with the Rebellion, it was comforting to know that the daring adventures of the Clone Wars had already happened. Even if it had all come to a bitter end. As every child does, Leia watched her parent’s mistakes and grew wise.

She led a Republic expedition to clamp down on the Hut territories in the Outer Rim, making sure to free as many slaves as they could. She remembered the anger and shame in her father’s voice when he spoke of being a slave, and Artoo’s vids had shown her brief glimpses of that experience. Leaving Tattooine as a child, being re-enslaved by the Zygerrians, then the Emperor in turn, despite all his power. She tried to understand how such experiences could shape someone into Darth Vader, as did Luke.

While he’d been travelling the galaxy, Artoo had found the time to show him videos as well, of the Jedi especially and he’d spent plenty of time drafting his own founding documents for the New Jedi Order. The former temple on Courscant, now the Imperial Palace, had contained a treasure trove of captured Jedi artefacts, which Luke devoured out of curiosity. Leia had some interest, especially with the knowledge that she was “Force-sensitive” as her brother put it, but she wasn’t ready to follow Luke and commit to being a full Jedi. There was just too much else to do.

____________

If he’d been watching, Anakin at least had the grace to wait until they were alone before announcing his arrival, flickering into existence at the window of Leia’s office in the Senate apartment building. Luke went to embrace his father and passed through him. “Father!”

Leia still held back. She knew far more about Anakin Skywalker than she had before, but the image of the towering mechanical man and a needle-tipped droid, that was him too. To pretend otherwise would be foolish and above all, dishonest when both R2 and Anakin himself had been honest with her. She split the difference and simply inclined her head.

“Anakin.”

The Force Ghost looked momentarily put out but gave her a welcoming smile every bit as wide as the one he’d given Luke moments before.

“It’s good to see you both again. Let me try something- “

He blinked out of existence just as quickly as he arrived and left a shimmer in the air that hadn’t been there before. Leia exchanged a look with Luke and they reached towards it with the Force. It felt like a thin barrier, behind which, something vast and powerful was moving at a tremendous speed. To Leia, it almost felt like a river, or some vast power conduit and Luke silently shook his head as they withdrew. “I don’t think he wants us to follow- “

Anakin reappeared, with one arm reaching within the shimmer. “I wanted to try bringing your mother with me this time. Obi-Wan told me it was a stupid idea, but- “

“It really is,” said the disembodied voice Leia recognized as Master Kenobi.

Her father shrugged as if he’d heard this a thousand times, set his feet and heaved.

The shimmer in the air began to make a low humming sound as Luke and Leia hovered around the Force Ghost helplessly. Luke reached out with his own mind, only to be violently shoved back into his own skull. He remained standing, but skidded back a few feet at the residual shock. Anakin grit his teeth and redoubled his effort until a faint cry of pain could be heard from within the shimmer.

“Annie, no! It hurts!”

He let go immediately, sent a brief apologetic look at a dumfounded Leia and dove head-first into the shimmer. An invisible whipcrack of power flared from the spot and detonated several of the lights above them, which exploded into shards of glass and plastek. Leia pushed out and formed a Force shield above them which caused the glass to either embed itself in her invisible barrier or slide sideways down to clatter against the floor. She breathed out slowly and lowered the remaining shards to the ground. Even after her rudimentary training, holding so many small objects in the air was surprisingly exhausting. She settled for mentally sweeping them into a small pile in the corner of the room with her mind, which kept her occupied rather than following Anakin through to wherever. Luke suggested meditation, as if that was going to help calm her down, and settled into a lotus position on the cleared floor while she paced in front of the window. After five minutes of silence Anakin climbed out of the shimmer, still blue and transparent, but somehow covered in sweat. As he collapsed to the floor panting, the shimmer disappeared.

“I did warn you,” said Obi-Wan’s voice. “Many times.”

“I had to try,” protested Anakin as he wiped his face with the edge of his robe. “This was important.”

“Is she alright?” said Leia.

“Yes, thank the Force, but I’m going to be in hot water later, either with her or the Force itself.”

Luke perked up. “The Force has a personality? Like, it can talk to you?”

His father shook his head. “No, it feels the same as it did when I was alive. Just a pull, or in this case, a pain in my head. It’s just more noticeable now I have no life or body to distract me.” He made a noise of disgust. “How am I even sweating, though? That’s annoying.”

He looked up at Leia. “Do I smell?” All he received was a blank stare of incomprehension. “Seriously, it’s an important question. I’m trying to figure out what I can do besides talk.”

“Not much,” said Obi-Wan as Leia shrugged.

“You don’t smell like anything to me, but that’s not why you’re here, right?”

“No, it’s not.” Anakin stood up and brushed his hair back from his face as Luke unfolded from his meditation and approached. “I can’t stay long, and I can’t visit too often, so I wanted to let you know. Dragging myself out of the Cosmic Force is exhausting, and the longer I speak with you, the more time will pass as I recuperate. It’s like sleeping without dreams.”

“Could Master Yoda give us advice?” piped up Luke. “I’m trying to rebuild the Jedi Order and the records say he was the Grandmaster for the last 900 years, almost back to the Old Republic era and the Rusaan Reformations.”

Anakin scowled, which made the scar along his eyebrow ripple. “Master Yoda also oversaw the fall of the Jedi Order and failed to correct its many mistakes. No, my son. We can offer you advice, but to build a successful Jedi Order, you must start anew. Trust your feelings and your sister’s judgement.”

“What, Anakin I barely know the first thing about being a Jedi! And I have my hands full with the New Republic as it is.” She indicated her desk, piled high with dataslates and drafts on provisional governance. Anakin began pacing back and forth in front of her window, his strides an eerie mirror of her own.

“Luke, it is important to draw wisdom from many different sources, lest it becomes rigid and stale. The Jedi did a great deal of good, but they were not the only Force-Wielders in the galaxy besides the Sith. I encountered Nightsister clans of Dathomir as well as a trio of Force-Wielders on Mortis. While I doubt either remain alive or are capable of communication, the Jedi’s refusal to consider alternative points of view made it easier for us to fall to the Dark Side.”

“A certain point of view…” said Luke thoughtfully when an older man shimmered into existence next to him. “Ben!”

Anakin bowed and Leia after hesitating, copied him. “Master Kenobi, it is good to hear your voice.” She smiled. “I see you received my message.”

That caused some laughter, but Obi-Wan continued. “What Anakin says is true, in many respects. Even when I was young, the Jedi still had some contact with the Dagoyan Order or the Kethmiri Flow-Singers but they faded by the time I became a Jedi Knight. The Council felt that too much attachment to other Force-wielders could allow Jedi to easily become corrupted by the Dark Side.”

“Which is what saved me.” Now it was Anakin’s turn to be smug as Obi-Wan sighed in exasperation and they began to bicker.

“It’s an old argument,” whispered Luke in apology. For her part, Leia was fascinated, not by the specifics of the argument, which she rapidly lost context for, but the interplay between the two Force Ghosts and Luke. While the two older men argued with both passion and reason, they would periodically ask Luke or Leia to chime in with their opinions or provide examples. While she had little knowledge of the philosophy of the Force beyond the “feel” of it in her existence, she offered anecdotes from her own childhood or time in the Rebellion she had come to realize were moments of accidental Force usage. For his part, Luke offered few stories, but engaged on a philosophical level, arguing for Anakin’s view on the importance of positive relationships and for Ben’s insistence that the Jedi had to stay away from actively involving themselves in government. On that, at least, Leia was glad. She had enough to worry about without having to add Luke’s New Jedi Order to the governing structures of the New Republic. An hour later, Ben had disappeared, Anakin kept flickering, and even Luke seemed worn out. Leia, ever the master social niceties, thanked her father for his visit and added that he would be welcome to visit again, as long as he announced himself first.

She hadn’t forgiven him for Alderaan, or her real father in Bail Organa, or any of the other things he’d done, but now, she felt she understood who her father was. At least a bit.

“Goodbye Anakin, it was nice to speak with you.”

“And I, you, Leia Organa.” He gave a small smile. “See you later.”

And for a while, that was that.


	4. Han Meets Dead Old Dad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Han Solo, the firm rationalist, has come to accept a lot of crazy things when Luke's Jedi stuff is concerned. But the dead really can't speak, can they? That'd be stupid AND impossible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can probably see my writing quirks here, especially how I keep track of who's who in a multi-person dialogue, which still takes some getting used to. And yes, I know I use too much actual dialogue when I could just skim it, but hope I have a stronger sense for character voice that doesn't come across as obnoxious with Han.
> 
> For reference, plastek aka a flimsy/flimsi is what they use in place of paper in Star Wars apparently, which I find questionable. A government bureaucracy like the Empire would love paper trails, but maybe my Warhammer 40k is showing there. See if you can find the references!
> 
> My keyboard also has a sticky spacebar and "e" key, so if you see some spacing mistakes, sorry. Tried to get it fixed before the pandemic and the techs wanted $300 to do it, which is nuts. It's a faulty pressure sensor, not a Blackbird jet. Anyway, off we go!

After a certain amount of trepidation and a run on an antiques store to find jewelry from Alderaan, which now cost three times as much, Han finally popped the Question to Leia.

She’d said yes, of course, and they’d gone out for a night on the town in Courscant. Han had the foresight to propose during a tour of the Thousand Fountains, one of the few public spaces Palpatine had kept on the capital planet, and it had been an appropriately gorgeous setting. Now came the part he was least looking forward to, meeting the father of the bride.

Luke, with his occasionally creepy Jedi wisdom, had suggested it and several dozen conversations with an invisible blue man had at least made Leia less hostile to him. The how of the idea, was another matter altogether.

Which is why Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, R2-D2, and C-3PO had all gathered in the galley of the Millennium Falcon in anticipation of something Han still doubted was possible. He’d seen Luke do plenty of crazy stuff during the war, so he could accept the existence of The Force, if The Force meant Luke could juggle empty juice cartons or wield a lightsaber without cutting his toe off. (Han would never tell a soul and it wasn’t like he’d needed that little toe. The sword even cauterized itself, so Han had fewer questions from the medical droid.)

Anyway, Han expected a few minutes of Luke straining like he’d not had enough fiber, shrugs all around, and a nightcap to wrap up the night. He wasn’t nervous at all. Really.

“You’re as stiff as wrossyr bark, Solo,” said Chewie.

Han rolled his eyes. “Laugh it up fuzzball, we just gotta let Luke try his thing. Nothin’s gonna happen anyway.”

“What makes you say that?” asked Leia.

“Look, most cultures across the galaxy believe in some version of the afterlife. I get it, it’s easy to think about some big reward waiting for you in-” he waved his hands to indicate mystical hooey, ”the Great Beyond, but nobody’s ever really come back from the dead. Those are just ghost stories to scare kids into good behavior, or some goon running a con.”

Artoo whistled and beeped, as Threepio contributed to the conversation.

“Strictly speaking Mister Solo, it is not entirely outside possibility. There have been six million, twenty-two thousand, five hundred and six confirmed cases of beings recovering from heart or central organ failure. Electrical shocks, pulmonary respiration, and advanced surgical techniques have allowed for many beings to survive when they otherwise would not. The CX-Dreadnought chassis-“

Han waved away the golden droid’s objections. “Medical junk doesn’t count, that’s practically mechanical anyway. You can keep somebody’s heart going long after their brain stopped, right? I’m talkin’ about _this_.” He tapped his head.

“My natural charm, smarts, roguish good looks, can’t do that hooked up to a dozen computers keepin’ me going. Everything that’s me, that goes somewhere when I kick it, but nobody’s come back from that.”

Leia sipped her Corellian brandy. “This is an awfully morbid discussion a month before a wedding,” she pointed out.

“Look Leia, your brother’s trying his Spirit-Walkin’ thing over there, which lends itself to a certain kind of-“

“This would go easier, Han, if you’d stop talking.”

Han shrugged and went back to his own brandy. Being the General of the New Republic’s Special Forces meant more budget for repairs and a well-stocked liquor cabinet, so he was content. One or two side jobs had come up, but he’d put those on the back-burner. Chewie and Leia would keep him mostly on the straight and narrow anyway. Mostly.

C-3PO, Chewie, and Artoo were debating the existence of a Droid Afterlife and which one of the innumerable scrapyard planets might be considered Robot Hell, when Luke started to float. It wasn’t much, maybe an inch or two off the ground, but his hair floated around him like he was deep underwater, which prompted a quiet “woah” from Han.

“You okay there, kid?”

“Fine.” Luke sounded distracted. “Father, it’s Luke, are you there? It’s Luke.”

He paused, then lowered back to the ground as he let out a long breath.

“Whew, that was-that was tough.”

He paused again, listening, then Leia spoke up.

“Luke, he’s right, that could have killed you! You’re as white as a sheet!”

“He’s here isn’t he?”

“Woah, woah, woah!” Han held up his hands, allowing his brain to catch up with the conversation. “You mean, your Dad’s here? Right now?”

Luke and Leia exchanged a look. “I was afraid of this,” she said, “this is going to be a pain.”

Han turned to Chewie and the droids, the other members of their group he could be sure saw objective reality. “You guys see anything?”

He got a chorus of no’s. “Artoo, Leia said you knew this guy, you got a picture, or something? If we’re doin’ this, it’ll feel real weird talking to nothing. Then I really will go crazy.”

Leia looked at the same empty spot in the air Luke was staring at and shrugged. “Go for it. Luke, could you just pass along what Anakin says so the others can hear? We’re just going to let a few people know anyway.”

As Luke nodded, R2 beeped and projected the massive, scowling visage of Darth Vader, cape swirling behind him and lit by some nameless red glow. C3PO cowered as Chewie growled and Luke scowled. “Very funny Artoo.” He paused, listening. “Father’s fondly annoyed and says you’ve always been a pain in the rear gasket. He hopes you’re well and the left fuel nozzle on your rocket boosters has been tightened.”

R2 paused and let out a streak of beeps, shrill whistles, and buzzes that Han didn’t require the protocol droid to translate. “He’s impressed you’ve improved the variety of your cursing.”

“So, uh,” Han stood up and looked in the same direction Luke and Leia were. “Han Solo. It’s nice to meet you, again, Mister Vader-Skywalker, sir.” He offered his hand impulsively before feeling deeply stupid and shoving it back in his pocket. Luke and Leia both smiled.

“He says it’s very nice to meet you formally, now that he’s not trying to kill you. He also wants to know if this is your ship.”

Han unconsciously relaxed. Now they were talking machines, he could just pretend this was a holocall with a bad connection. He’d done those before.

“Yeah, this’s the Falcon in all her glory. You’ve only seen our rear thrusters, pretty as they may be, but I put in a bunch of credits to get this baby wired up now that we’re representatives of the New Republic an’ all.” He pointed to two boxes that were only slightly less grungy than the rest of the galley. “Added a six-person, Cobalt-encryption sensor suite for those TIE Interceptors, and the Issvar jamming system that came out last year.”

He waited expectantly, but his eyes kept flicking to Artoo’s Darth Vader holo. It was not a comforting sight.

Threepio intervened. “Oh come now Artoo, just show them Master Anakin’s old photo. He looks much better there without that horrible mask.”

Artoo booped reluctantly and switched over as Han found himself looking at a slightly shorter man with longer hair and a scar over his eye. The image was of Anakin Skywalker looking across at something or someone, for his eyes were laser-focused on Han and his mouth set in a stern-looking resting face. “Artoo, just show him the smiling one, that’s much better!”

The man’s face brightened, and his stance had softened, one hand held out to gesticulate mid-conversation, though the image was still frozen.

Han shivered. _This is spooky_ , he thought as Luke spoke up.

“That’s great, he’d been wondering how the Issvar system would turn out, said he was looking into it for his own fighter. Father used to be a bit of a mechanic, said every good star pilot was, really.”

Anakin and Han chatted for a few minutes about the pros and cons of various systems for starfighters, as well as what had been available for military channels, while Luke patiently relayed his father’s words. Leia sat silently, occasionally taking a sip of her brandy as she built up her courage. At least they seemed to be getting along.

Unfortunately, Threepio beat her to it. Her father had inquired after C3PO’s well-being and apologized several times for the protocol droid’s dismemberment in Cloud City. Threepio had acted miffed at first but was soon babbling on to his old master about his work bringing the droid-led Cognomen of Asteroids into the fledgling New Republic last month. He’d returned to Coruscant to find that Mistress Leia had the temerity to get engaged without informing him! Anakin’s head whipped around as the protocol droid let out a soft “Oh dear.” Leia gave a weak smile in response while Han stared at the room in horror.

“Surprise! Well, that’s what we wanted to tell you, not that we plan to make it a public announcement, honestly.”

Han chimed in. “Just a small little ceremony on Endor, we were thinking. Somewhere with nice trees. Sir.” He winced and stared expectantly at the spot in the air Anakin Skywalker was apparently occupying. Luke and Leia winced, and the latter made to cover her ears

“Father, please-“

“Wow, you’ve really set him off.”

“What? What’s going on? Is he mad?”

Leia reached down and took a long pull of her drink. “He tried to hug you and failed because he’s a ghost. Now he’s leaping around and cheering like he won a podracing tournament.”

“He actually did that, apparently.” Luke piped up, his eyes following the invisible, soundless spectre around the galley of the Falcon.

Han reached for his own drink to steady his nerves. “He’s not mad? He doesn’t object?”

“He just clicked his heels, Han. He’s-Anakin, Anakin!” Leia held up her hands in the universal “calm down” gesture. “Like Han said, we’re just going to do something small, less than thirty people. I don’t think, oh Stars!”

“He’s very happy for you both,” said Luke dryly, but Han could see him fighting back a grin at his expense. “He has all sorts of suggestions for where you could hold the ceremony. Leia, do you want to write any of this down?”

“Sorry, but cost is kinda a factor right now,” admitted Han. “Not like we’re dirt poor or anything, but if we’re trying to get this New Republic shindig up and running it’d look pretty bad for us to do any gold-plated reception or get Tanith-wood tables on the Rebellion or Republic’s dime. Not that we plan to be slummin’ it for the rest of our days.” He realized he was babbling and shut his mouth. Luke was grinning openly now.

“Father’s impressed, but still finds that terribly funny. He says, hang on.”

Luke dashed out of the room and Han could hear him rummaging in the storage boxes before he returned with a pen and a flimsy piece of plastek. “He says he had a few unconnected accounts with the Banking Clans you could use, and one with the Core Bank too. Apparently as a General in the Grand Army of the Republic, most of the Jedi earned a respectable stipend, but most of them just donated it to charities.” He paused, looked up at his father, and started scribbling as Leia mouthed a silent “wow” at Han.

“That is…a lot of credits.”

Han’s mouth went dry. Payday.

“We really appreciate the offer Mister Skywalker, sir but, uh, how many credits are we talkin’ about here?”

Leia named a figure that could buy a moon. Two small ones if they chose well. Chewie and Artoo cheered while Threepio complained they should at least be able to afford him an oil bath every now and again.

Han’s mind tried to wrap itself around the idea, failed, and promptly seized up. He would never have to smuggle even a speck of spice if he didn’t want to. He could buy a permanent house somewhere nice or build one for Leia. Someplace with a pool or a hoverchair, something classy. He realized someone was saying his name but before he could focus back in, he swore he saw something blue in front of him too.

“Han? Solo, can you hear us?” Leia was waving her hand in front of his face, so he blinked and moved it aside. “Okay, okay, I’m back. Sorry, that just took me a bit to take in. You said these were unconnected bank accounts, so what about the others? They ask you to sign Darth Vader on your checks?”

Luke was scribbling down account numbers and passwords like a sabaac dealer collecting his winnings. “He says he had one or two accounts in the Imperial Navy’s system under the Emperor’s command. Those needed his personal authorization and would get noticed by the other Imperials who pay attention to accounting. Word would get out someone’s using those, and we don’t want people to think Darth Vader’s still out there.”

He grimaced.

“Sorry, Father. Lots of people still don’t believe it, especially in the Mid-Rim. The worlds with rebellions you-“

The sentence hung in the air. Crushed under the boot of Imperial might? Bombarded from orbit? Assassinated leaders? Mercilessly crushed any scintilla of defiance? Yes, those worlds.

Han cleared his throat and looked to Leia. “Well, those unmarked accounts, if those are clean, then yeah. We can do a lot of good with that. What was that thing you were worried about last week honey? With the grain shipments? Naggle-Toff?”

“Nagai-Toff,” she corrected.

“Yeah, that. See, one more problem solved there Mister Skywalker. We’re gonna have this New Republic up and running really quick now.”

Luke and Leia listened to the Force Ghost in silence for a few moments while Han and Chewie debated what they absolutely needed to upgrade on the Falcon, now they were going to be filthy rich. Well, more like respectably well off, but it was still a lot better than Han had dreamed of when he was up to his cargo hold in spice, smuggled refugees, and questionable machine parts.

“No, Anakin, I don’t think that’s possible. I know you’d want Mother’s family to be there, but I looked. The Amidalas were curious, but I’ve been so busy, there’s just not much of a relationship there. Queen Nabierre, her sister’s daughter is pushing hard for Naboo to be a key funder of the New Republic, but some of the hardest-hit worlds don’t want anything to do with the world the Emperor came from, so it’s been something of a sticking point. Yes, their credentials as a peaceful world speak for themselves, but it’s- “

Leia’s voice softened. “Alright Anakin, I’ll try.”

R2 chirped in indignation from the corner.

“Of course, you’ll both be there Artoo. Someone has to hold the rings. No, I don’t care if you’re an ordained minister on twelve planets, not everyone can understand Binary.”

“Hang on a second,” Han snapped his fingers as the idea hit him. “As long as we’ve got him here, any more really juicy secrets Mister Skywalker can give us? I mean, if he threw the Emperor down a shaft, and he was that old bag’s Number Two, there must be all sorts of stuff he can tell us!”

They all stared at the invisible spirit, waiting on tenterhooks.

“He says he doesn’t know everything; he was mostly disinterested in wider Imperial operations and the Emperor kept him close on the Second Death Star for the most part. If the Emperor wanted to make me his new apprentice, then Vader would be redundant then.”

Leia perked up while Luke made a grunt of confusion.

“The Emperor’s Hands? The Inquisitorius? Keep going.”

“My father heard rumors about them!” exclaimed Leia, now typing away on a dataslate of her own. “He said they were the best of the Emperor’s spies and assassins, that some might even be Force-sensitive.”

Now Luke was invested, and he exchanged a giddy look with Han as the twins copied down information from beyond the grave. They’d really hit the jackpot.

“Wah-Aw, c’mon Ben!” groaned Luke as he threw up his hands. Han was nonplussed until his brain connected the dots. “Wait you mean Ben from that first mission on the Death Star? That Old Ben?”

Luke nodded. “He’s saying that Force Ghosts shouldn’t give the living too much information and that it would upset the natural balance of the Force. Wants Father to leave with him, but he’s resisting.”

“Spoilsport, he’s just being a stickler. What kinda afterlife is that, I tell you, wait, are they,”-Han looked around, as if expecting stray cargo to start flinging itself around the room. “Are they fighting?”

Luke almost looked like he wished his father would, but said no. “Just some complaining and Father’s getting dragged toward the door for some reason.”

Han had to end this on a good note, so he waved and smiled at the doorway.

“Well, it was nice meeting you Mister Skywalker, sir. Thanks for all the help and we’ll try to get you an invitation for the wedding, uh…somehow.”

Leia smiled and waved goodbye as well, but only when Luke let out a breath and said, “They’re gone,” did they fully relax.

Teen minutes later, running down their list of names and locations, Han cursed and turned to stare at the doorway.

“What is it?”

“I forgot to ask if they play sabaac in the afterlife.”


	5. The Man Behind the Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Obi-Wan wants to lecture Anakin about staying involved in the living world, but they meet someone they did not expect.

“Obi-Wan! Obi-Wan, get OFF of me!”

Anakin Skywalker wrestled out of the headlock his Master had him and stood stunned.

He’d been dragged out of his conversation with Luke, Leia, and her fiancé(!) Han Solo, but he was no longer aboard the Millennium Falcon. He stood in a field of stars.

He looked down to feel a floor beneath his boots, but only the soft ripples of white light from his footsteps indicated he was walking on anything at all. Vast, soaring roads of light spun away into infinity above him, below him, and Anakin realized with a start that he could hear voices.

_“Annie, you’re not all powerful.”_

_“Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.”_

_“What you need you already have, but you seem to be letting it all go.”_

Subtle. He rounded on Obi-Wan, attempting to berate him for the uncharacteristically blatant emotional manipulation, only to see his former Master looked just as stunned as he did.

“Obi-wan?” he asked, knowing he wouldn’t like the answer, “Where did you bring us?”

“I do not know, but…” he listened as the voices subsided to soft whispers or became distant rumbles of thunder inside the starscape. “I certainly did not intend to do so, simply to drag you away and out of their sight. The dead should not continue to influence the living, especially not Jedi.”

Anakin snorted and crossed his arms, but the voices interrupted his retort.

_“Jedi scum!”_

_“You could have chosen to let your people die. However, you chose to be a Jedi…”_

_“I am a Jedi, like my father before me.”_

_“I will not be the Last Jedi…”_

Obi-Wan and Anakin instinctively drew closer, covering each other’s backs. Anakin dearly wished he had a lightsaber.

“You are going to be a bother, aren’t you?”

The voice came from a circular portal outlined in light and a man emerged, dusting his hands of some unseen liquid. He was dressed in grey, with his half-buttoned pilot’s jacket spilling open to reveal a deep blue shirt. His hands and forearms were wrapped in white cloth, which Anakin could see had Aurabesh scripture he couldn’t make out. At his belt hung a vicious bone-white helmet fashioned in a silver-toothed snarl while his face was young, with a shaved head and a slight pout.

Anakin didn’t trust him, just from that. “And who are you?”

The man spread his hands as if the answer was evident. “Galen Marek, at your service.” His mouth took on a smirk. “Also known as Starkiller, The Ebon Hand, and Vader’s Apprentice. A rather more recent title is the Bound Eclipse.”

Obi-wan met Anakin’s eye and tugged on a corner of his mustache. Anakin shook his head and pulled his hair back behind his ear. Galen Marek sighed and collapsed backwards into what sounded like a comfortable but invisible plush chair.

“Would you cut it out? I know exactly what you’re saying, with that little coded language and I’m not here to hurt you.”

“I’ve heard that before, mostly just before I got hurt,” snipped Obi-Wan. “Who are you really? Darth Vader had no formal apprentice, he kept killing off his rivals for the Emperor’s attention.”

“Please don’t say it like that Master.”

“It’s true though.”

His voice deepened for an instant as he glowered. “I was eliminating rivals. Be grateful they never came after you, Old Man.”

“But you’ve never seen this boy?”

“Oh, for real?” exclaimed Galen in mock indignation. I’m twenty-two! I…think.”

“No, I haven’t,” rumbled Anakin who suddenly was finding it difficult to breathe or stand.

Galen Marek cursed and stood, moving swiftly to the Force Ghost’s side. “I knew this was going to happen sooner or later. Hang on Master.”

He pressed one cloth-wrapped hand forward.

“Don’t bother, we’re-“

The man’s fingers spread across the crown of his head as he struggled to breathe. He could feel this man, for the first time, both physically and in the Force and oh by the twin moons…

Anakin Skywalker was the Chosen One, a shining light of Force energy in a sea of fireflies. Galen Marek was a lighthouse, a vast colossus of immovable grey purpose and brilliant light focused now on him. He was bigger than anything Anakin had ever felt, but he kept that power hidden, pushed deep down until it was ready to serve its purpose. He was too much, too huge and Anakin couldn’t breathe-

“Hush, Skywalker,” said the man, his hand already withdrawing. “You have much to learn here, things even Qui-Gon Jinn could not accomplish. I have brought you both here for a purpose, so you will SIT and listen.”

Galen Marek raised his voice slightly and both glowing Force Ghosts found themselves falling back into the same invisible seats their host had occupied as thunder rumbled in the distance.

“I’m getting there, hang on,” muttered Marek, but to who, Anakin could not tell. Was there some kind of being above even a Force Ghost or the Mortis Gods, as invisible to them as they were to non Force-sensitives? Were they in danger still? Perhaps.

“So, where is here, exactly?” asked Obi-Wan, ever his inquisitive, curious Master. “It’s certainly not in the physical world.”

“No, it’s not,” said Marek, folding his hands around a series of floating mechanical parts that hadn’t been there before. “This is The World Between Worlds, a part of the Cosmic Force very few have ever or will ever visit. As Force Ghosts, you straddle the line between the Living Force and the Cosmic Force, so it was easiest to pull you here to talk.” He scowled. “Just be grateful I didn't take us to the Holiday Special. No, my warning is for you alone.”

“Me?” said an indignant Obi-Wan. “I was trying to stop Anakin from passing on too much information to the living! There are reasons the dead do not often speak with the living and his irrational emotional attachments to-“

Anakin could tell his Master was working himself up into a rant and gritted his teeth. The same sort of self-righteous, innocently ignorant, patronizing tone of “Kenobi knows best” had ground his gears for all of their time together, in sporadic short bursts. His temper boiled over. “See this is your problem, you never LISTEN!”

Thunder rumbled in the distance as Galen Marek snapped his hands forward in a grasping motion and Anakin felt invisible hands cover his mouth.

“Do not speak again. Not in this place. I brought you here because I thought you would remain humble and retain the proper perspective, but I can see now I was mistaken. The more you speak, the greater the chance something else hears you!” the man hissed. “Now listen.”

The man released them and continued. “Ordinarily, Kenobi would be correct, that Force Ghosts should not linger too long in the world of the Living Force. It upsets the balance between the Living Force and the Cosmic Force, just as how action in your world tips the balance between the light and the dark. As Anakin was meant to tend to the latter, I was meant to tend to the former.”

The smirk returned, but a tad more rueful this time. “I was pulled into the world of the Living Force, where I acquired this name, this body, and a number of charming other things.” He held up a small squarish plastic figure of Anakin and wiggled it. “Never did find all the canisters.” Anyway, I was never meant to officially exist. So when I died at the hands of Lord Vader or Emperor Palpatine depending on who and when you talk to, all of me returned here. I tell you this to illustrate the stakes.”

Anakin and Obi-Wan exchanged a look. _Was this man insane_?

Marek’s grin disappeared as he pocketed the little figure and returned to his floating metal pieces. “The Cosmic Force is out of balance. This World allows access to all that was, all that is, and will be, but watch.”

They sat in silence until Anakin and Obi-Wan’s eyes widened and they nodded. Galen returned the gesture. “Yes, the stars. Many are going out; new ones are springing into existence. Portals no longer lead to where and when they once did, and many have closed entirely. Now two vast versions of your same future are speeding towards one another, about to collide. Imagine the high-speed collision of two lifters carrying glass.”

They imagined.

“Each shard of broken glass is a possibility. The old future, which sat quietly, undisturbed for a very, very long time, is being displaced by a new one.”

Obi-Wan raised a hand, cautiously and Galen indicated he could speak. The Jedi Master whispered anyway.

“Isn’t that what happens when choices are made? The future alters depending on those choices?”

The void whispered. _"The future, by its very nature, can be changed"._

Galen shook his head. “Thousands of smaller futures, even the mid-sized ones most likely to occur, are now being shoved aside by a Leviathan. It is straining and stretching to fit itself to your present, but the damage will be, has been, incalculable. Planets will have their biomes change in the blink of an eye, hyperspace lanes have shrunk, Revan will never be canon.” He locked eyes with Anakin. “Children will never be born.”

The Chosen One swallowed. “What do you want us to do?”

At that, Galen’s expression lightened from the dour one he’d worn before. “What you and I always did Master. Take a third option.”

Despite himself, Obi-Wan smiled. Hideous calamity, mysterious strangers, threadbare plans, it was just like old times.

“Skywalker, you can cross the gulf effortlessly now. Your death is beyond you, but your task is not yet complete. Return to your children, and your children’s children, and their heroes. Show them a new way. Kenobi, watch and listen as you always do. Skywalker will need your guidance in the years to come.”

The mechanical pieces in Galen’s hands flowed together into two cylindrical designs any Knight would recognize. Anakin reached for the hilt of a lightsaber, but Galen shook his head. “Oh, you thought this was yours?” he let out a dry humorless chuckle. “No, I’m lending one of mine to an old friend. Your way home should be two doors to your left. The one with the triangle above it. Now, be on your way!”

Marek rose to his feet smoothly and made a shooing motion at the two Jedi, as if they were disobedient children being dismissed. “I don’t have all day.”

Obi-Wan looked puzzled. “If this place is outside of time, shouldn’t you have all the time in the world?”

Galen shook his head. “Like I said, it’s a World between Worlds, plural. It’s best not to get them mixed up. Go!”

Thunder rumbled at his words and Anakin and Obi-Wan walked swiftly (Jedi did not scurry) to the indicated portal. Obi-Wan strode through, but Anakin hesitated on the threshold and looked back. Perhaps it was simply a part of his disobedient nature, perhaps it was simple curiosity.

He saw a short, potbellied, bespectacled man in a flannel shirt and a grey beard appear from a portal across the way, and for a moment their eyes met as Anakin turned to go. But he heard Galen’s voice, chiding and amused in equal measure.

“George, it’s good to see you! Now, what have you gotten us into now?”

The man muttered something inaudible as the World Between Worlds vanished, but Galen Marek’s response said it all.

“THE MOUSE?!?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Galen Marek, aka Starkiller from the Force Unleashed is a prime example of an Edgy Character and I somehow love the redeemable goofball. Here, the reason he was so powerful was because he was meant to help balance the Living and Cosmic Force, not ever be an actual living person. He's here to make sure ambitious Sith or Jedi don't try to use the World Between Worlds and to take a lightsaber to the fourth wall, but he won't be a prominent character, don't worry. This is just an excuse to let Anakin hang around and change stuff.
> 
> Also if you haven't seen the Rebels episode A World Between Worlds, it's some top-tier Star Wars.


	6. Shadows of the Past and Future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anakin and Obi-Wan return to find Luke Skywalker trapped between two problems. The universe has continued and they've missed a great deal.

Though Anakin Skywalker was a ghost, he blinked and breathed anyway. Some actions are too fundamental for the mind to discard, even if the body that required them vanished into the Cosmic Force. So when he blinked away whatever black void had obscured his vision, he was slightly disappointed to be standing in the air of an empty Courscant hanger. “Exactly where I was before Obi-Wan started interfering, but” he mused over the idea, “not when I was if the ship’s gone. Let’s see if I can-“

He thought of his son and was gone.

He was surprised to recognize his surroundings, namely the moon of Yavin IV, with the red gas giant filling the sky above him and the noise of a lush jungle moon to complement it. He wandered, silently taking in the memories he’d left here. A stranded Padawan encountered Assaj Ventress for the first time, a hate-fueled cyborg had attempted to shoot down the pilot who would be his son, then returned to scour the Rebellion from Yavin’s moons.

“Father!”

Anakin was spared his brooding by the arrival of Luke Skywalker, covered in sweat and grime and running as fast as his legs could carry him. Without having to ask, Anakin began running as he felt the Force freeze around him and a crowd of glowing red ghosts continue their pursuit of both father and son. Despite this, he and Luke shared a hurried smile as they charged through the undergrowth.

“Where have you been? I was worried Ben had dragged you off to the great Sand Dune in the sky! And why are you here now?”

Anakin shrugged as he attempted to leap a crumbling stone block and simply passed through the back half. “Big Cosmic Force problem, so I got assigned to sort it out. I almost miss the Jedi Council giving me orders. Wait, no I don’t. Be grateful Luke, you would’ve died of boredom in the Temple, case in point.”

Luke looked slightly wistful before a branch smacked him in the face and he fell behind. The red Force Ghosts immediately fell upon him and though they could not touch him, his son cried out as they tore at his form. He ignited his lightsaber in a hiss of green and swung, but the blade passed through both plant life and un-life with minimal resistance.

Anakin patted himself down, to no avail. No lightsaber, no holdout blaster (for any hapless civilian tag-alongs), no com-link or grapnel wire. None of the tools a Jedi Knight was accustomed to, but Anakin had always taken an unseemly interest in the close combat tutorials. He cocked his fists, noting with slight glee that one was still metallic. He’d gratefully left behind the clunky, painful, poor-quality augmentics Palpatine had provided Darth Vader, but the arm Count Dooku had taken on Geonosis had been metal for so long that it had endured beyond the grave. It proved to be very useful.

To his delight, his metallic fist hammered into the jaw of one of the Sith Guardian spirits and knocked the red-skinned being out cold. His fellows let out a howl of rage and abandoned Luke in favor of the other Skywalker. As Luke sat panting in the grass, his father was quickly regretting his earlier enthusiasm. It felt satisfying to regain the thrill of combat, the rush of adrenaline, (even though the latter didn’t really exist) but even the Hero with No Fear couldn’t fight twelve ancient Sith Guardians without any weapon at all. He kicked out as they came into range and yes, apparently ancient Sith also collapsed when they lost their family jewels. The next warrior lunged with a bellow of “Sadow!” and grabbed Anakin’s withdrawing leg.

He pivoted on his hip and bodily flung the Skywalker across the clearing. Without any physical resistance, Anakin tumbled across the underbrush and through several trees before he ground to a stop. The ghosts were once again bearing down on him when he had an idea.

If he could fight these ghosts physically, perhaps… Glaring at the Sith, who were gnashing their fangs as they approached, Anakin lifted his hand and reached for the Force.

It wasn’t where he expected it to be. It wasn’t inside of him, the shining fire or later the cold rage he was used to, but it was still around him, and around Luke. It was the forest, the trees, the grass, the lichen covering the ancient temple, and now, he saw, the very fabric of reality itself. Breathing out slowly, he pushed.

The front row of Sith warriors were banished into dust with howls of disappointment and fury, but the next wave was already upon them. Anakin looked over to Luke. “So, keep running?”

Luke looked slightly frightened now. “Father, do you have a plan?”

“I’ll come up with one on the way, let’s get to that temple!”

They ran off and Anakin was considerate enough to match Luke’s stride. “Mind telling me why, we’re fighting Sith ghosts where your Rebel base used to be?”

His son carved through a bush with his lightsaber and kept going. “Searching for a place-to build-a New Jedi Order. I felt some Dark Side energy and thought-whew- it would be a good place to build a resistance to it. I didn’t expect-“

They dodged left as one of the Sith dove for their legs and instead ate dirt. “For there to be this much evil hidden away!”

The square outline of an ancient ziggurat loomed before them and Anakin’s steps slowed as he recognized the broken summit where he’d battered Assaj Ventress down into the darkness so long ago. He could feel it now, the echo of the dark side within, surprisingly subtle for all its power. He had felt it back then, as a young Jedi Padawan and he could feel it now as a Force Ghost. Luke, lightsaber blazing green, strode in without a second thought as his father hurried to keep up, the Sith ghosts dogging their steps. Soon enough, a few twists and turns through the cavernous, water -filled hallways had lost their pursuers so the Skywalkers came to a stop. Luke leaned forward and Anakin waited until his son had gotten his breath back.

“It’s good to see you son.”

Luke smiled and in the green light, Anakin could see his face looked a little more weathered, his eyes a little more wise. “You too father. I worried when Ben dragged you away, but it’s good to hear your voice again. You’ve missed quite a bit.”

Anakin’s face fell. “Missed quite a bit?” How long was I gone?”

“A couple of years, five at most.” Luke grimaced. ”I tried to contact you for Leia’s wedding and the birth, but Leia made me stop after I passed out from blood loss.”

“Five years?!” Anakin wrenched his ghostly blue fingers through equally insubstantial hair and paced up and down the tunnel. “Wait, what birth?”

Luke was making the same face Padme did when she had bad news and it made Anakin’s heart twinge. “Han and Leia have a son, named Ben Solo. You’re a grandfather now.”

The joy in Anakin’s heart was mixed with the loss that he’d managed to miss not one, but two of his daughter’s most wonderful events in her life. He let out a breath that sounded very similar to Darth Vader’s vocabulator and felt his artificial hand clench in self-loathing. “That’s-that’s wonderful,” he said “how-how are Leia and Little Ben? Well, I can just go visit-”

He turned to vanish into the ether of the Cosmic Force, but stopped, looking sheepish. “My apologies Luke. I’m not going to leave you here in this Sith-infested temple like this. Since you keep calling me Father, I really should start deserving it.”

Luke didn’t bother to hide the relief that passed across his face and took the opportunity to look around the corridor they were in. “Thanks Father. I suppose you have the time, as a Force Ghost and all. Besides, I can catch you up on what’s been happening while we work our way to the center of the temple.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Anakin pointed. “It’s further down, of course so let’s go.”

They walked in silence for several minutes, navigating crumbling stairways and cramped tunnels brought down by the march of time. Sith and Jedi structures were built to last, but nature, even on Yavin 4, was incorrigible. Finally, after some time spent marshalling his thoughts, Luke spoke.

“Like I said, I’ve been working on finding the perfect spot for a new Jedi Temple. The Emperor’s Palace on Coruscant had all sorts of captured Jedi artefacts, especially Jedi Holocrons, and for once, I’ve got more lightsaber crystals than I know what to do with. Some of them I was planning to give to my students, but I think we’ll need to sell some of them to build the Jedi Temple in the first place. Some of your funds already built us an outpost on Dantooine, for what that’s worth.”

Anakin floated across a gap in the stonework. “You’re thinking this through, that’s good. You understand the responsibility, but I would caution you not to rely too much on those old holocrons. The Jedi Order of my day was flawed, and it had become corroded by the Clone Wars. They are a good basis, but you need to start again. Take my old apprentice, Ahsoka Tano, for example.”

“Oh, she’s amazing!” piped up Luke, eyes shining as a grin spread across his face. I met her on Bakura last year, we were both investigating rumors of some kind of Sith cult. Father, you should have seen her, she was so agile, it was a completely different fighting style than what Ben and Yoda taught me!”

Anakin felt relief break upon him like a wave and shimmered as the emotion threatened to make him lose his hold on the physical world. He tried to hug Luke, but passed through him once again. “I knew it! I knew she was alive!” He pumped his fist for emphasis and practically skipped down the tunnel to the diamond-shaped doorway. “I taught her a combination of Shien and Ataru a long time ago during the Clone Wars, and she used it against me on Malachor, when I was Darth Vader.” He looked embarrassed. “I was, well, trying to kill her at the time, but she shattered the floor under me just as I swung at her. Considering we were in a collapsing Sith Temple at the time, I was never sure if I’d killed her, or if she’d actually vanished in front of me. But she’s always been a survivor.”

He turned back to Luke and grinned. “I’m glad you two met.”

His son nodded, but his face was solemn. “She had a great deal to say about you, once she realized who I was. Plenty to say about Ben, I mean, Obi-Wan as well. Not all of it was good.”

The Force Ghost passed through the door and returned almost immediately, pointing an artificial thumb over his shoulder. “Big Dark Side Shrine in there, plus more of our glowing red friends. As for what you said about Ashoka, well, I’m not surprised. She knew us better than anyone else in the Jedi Order, perhaps too well. When she was younger, she had Obi-Wan’s arrogance and my hot temper. Not exactly qualities the Jedi Council looked kindly upon, but…”

He paused. “If you spoke with her, then I won’t bother explaining how I fell. Ashoka saw enough of me that she could give you the broad strokes. I taught her well but I think the best lessons she learned were after she left the Jedi Order and me, far behind. Case in point.” He indicated the diamond symbol on the doorframe, which Luke peered at obligingly. “This door requires the Dark Side to open, a little trick the Jedi and Sith use to keep their artefacts secure. Let’s see if I can-“

Anakin reached out and the Force chilled around him. Luke Jumped as his father’s formerly pure blue, robed form flicker to purple, then to red, a black cloak and telltale helmet jittering where the man’s human face had been. Darth Vader’s authoritative voice rumbled from the figure before him. “Nothing can be hidden from me, when I wish to know it.”

The door hissed open and Vader strode through, Luke following behind, the bow wave of Vader’s determination causing the red Sith ghosts to turn at their approach. The Skywalkers saw what had clearly once been an ornate throne room, bedecked in gold and finery, the bodies of the slaves all oriented towards the coffin in the center of the throne room. Luke hung back, eying his father’s Force Ghost nervously as one of the Sith approached and offered a rectangular object. “The Shadow is strong Master. We have waited so long, as has Naga Sadow, for someone worthy. Why do you bring one of Ashla’s own to such a place?”

Vader eyed the proto-lightsaber, which fizzled and spat red spurts of plasma before going out entirely. He discarded it with a gesture through the Force and the Sith warrior cringed before him.

“Apologies, Master! Thousand, thousand apologies! We will fix, will restore-“

“You will be silent,” spat Vader. “Skywalker is here to find the source of your power, as am I. Lead us to it.”

Luke was the only one who noticed, as they strode down the promenade towards the coffin, that his father’s hissing breath had become irregular and labored. When they reached the steps, Vader staggered and fell forward, flickering between red, blue, and purple.

“Father!”

“Master!”

Skywalker and Sith ran forward but the form before them finally solidified into the light blue form of Anakin Skywalker, shaken and covered in sweat. “That was unpleasant,” he gasped as the red Sith ghosts around them let out a bellow of rage and betrayal. “Jedi! Traitor! False!”

Half of the skull-faced helmet flickered back into place as Anakin shoved himself into a standing position. “ **ON YOUR KNEES**!” he bellowed and even Luke felt the pulse of Force Domination before his mind shook it off. The Sith knelt again, though this time they glanced back and forth, arguing amongst themselves in a dead language neither of the Skywalkers understood.

“Obi-Wan,” ground out Anakin through half a vocabulator, “I could use an Eighty-eight Christophis right about now.”

“Oh, very well,” came a familiar annoyed voice and an unmistakably blue Force Ghost entered visible range at the diamond-shaped entrance, waving cheerily at them. “Hello there, you vast, smelly things!”

Vader’s armored fist pointed at Obi-Wan. “ **Destroy him**!”

With a viable target and a Force Command, Naga Sadow’s long-dead warriors charged at Obi-Wan’s ghost, who fled back the way Luke and Anakin had came, whistling a jaunty spacer’s tune. Luke turned back to see Anakin Skywalker fall back into a seated position as Vader’s armor dissolved around him. “Father?”

Anakin clutched his chest, where he’d felt something artificial and painful breathing for him. “I hated being him.”

He looked up at Luke and his face cleared. “Luke.”

His son’s expression was equal parts awed and wary. “Are you alright Father? What was that?”

Anakin took a deep breath and pulled himself to his feet, striding up the stairs, with Luke behind him. “A lucky guess, honestly. I’d been a Sith for twenty years, roughly the same amount of time I’d been a Jedi, and considering the amount of Dark Side energy in this temple, I thought I’d see if I could ‘fake’ being a Sith.” He quirked his hands in air quotes, only to let them drop to his sides. “Except faking it was a great deal harder than I expected.”

(These were very long stairs.)

“Vader is just as much an aspect of your father as Anakin Skywalker,” said Obi-Wan, materializing next to them in a blue shimmer. To their credit, Anakin and Luke did not startle as the bearded man looked around. “My, my, this is a remarkably subtle concentration of Dark Side energy for all its potency.”

Luke nodded. “That’s probably why it’s been hidden so long, and why Father was able to go back to being Anakin Skywalker.” They looked at Anakin, who was still massaging his chest with his flesh hand.

“Rest assured, I’m not trying that trick again. Luke, go have your big heroic moment facing down whatever’s up there.” He waved at his son. “I’m just going to sit here. Just for a bit.”

Obi-Wan smiled at him. “I’ll keep him safe, old friend.”

Anakin waved them off and leaned back on the stairs, propping himself on the stairs, looking down at the mildew-draped opulence of an ancient Sith Lord. A morass of red energy flowed through the entrance and solidified into nearly thirty Sith Warriors who charged towards whatever Luke was doing with howls of fury. Anakin heard the sizzle of Force Lightning, the murmur of Obi-Wan’s calm voice, and Luke’s confident call over the clash of Force energy.

“You are but a memory, Naga Sadow. Rest, and I shall carry your memory forward into the future, as a cautionary tale.”

The Sith Warriors were almost upon them, so Anakin allowed his limbs to give out and tumbled down the stone stairs, bowling over as many of the Sith as possible and punching at whoever he did not sweep away. A great wind began to blow as he fell, carrying through the cavern and the red Sith dissolved at its caress, even as it carried Anakin Skywalker into a smooth landing at the bottom of the stairs. He shoved himself to his feet and looked up to see Luke and Obi-Wan making their way back down, the pyramidal shape of a Sith Holocron in Luke’s mechanical grip. As he watched, Luke held the crystal up and Anakin’s mouth fell open as he saw the device had lost its customary red glow. Instead, it glowed softly with white light. The Force around him was no longer a subtle pull of the Dark Side. Instead, it felt…expectant.

When they arrived at the bottom of the steps, Anakin smiled and, because he could not throw an arm around Luke, settled for a thumbs-up. “Great job son! I knew you’d do great.”

Luke perked up and again, he looked very much like Padme. “Thanks Father, but Master Kenobi here did most of the work.”

“Nonsense!” scoffed his friend, waving away Luke’s attempt at modesty. “Luke was able to figure out the Sith desired release from his holocron and offered him a way to free himself. I just handled the dissolution. A team effort.”

At Anakin’s quirked eyebrow, Obi-Wan huffed and gave an apologetic half-bow. “I had a great deal of time to think about how I’d failed you, so I’m trying to be fulsome with my praise.”

Luke was fidgeting and kept glancing at his father, something Obi-Wan had either failed or was pretending not to notice. For his part, Anakin had seen Ashoka exhibit the same mannerisms and could guess his son wished to speak in private.

 _One moment son,_ he sent through the Force. _I’m an expert at distracting Obi-Wan._

That Obi-Wan had allowed himself to be distracted never occurred to Anakin. Out loud, he said,

“Obi-Wan, speaking of praise and previous failures, Luke was speaking about Ashoka earlier, and I wanted to, well, visit and apologize. Could you give her some warning? Having the ghost of her old master show up unexpectedly would be something of a shock.”

Obi-Wan’s expression said clearly that he didn’t buy it, but Anakin had made a perfectly valid request. So the Jedi Master shrugged and tugged at a corner of his beard that, in their own private signal language, meant _I hope you know what you’re doing._ His one-time Padawan tapped his cheek, which meant _trust me!_

The instant Obi-Wan’s Force Presence disappeared, Luke’s posture slumped and he sat back on the steps with a sigh, motioning for his father to join him.

Anakin sat, elbows on spectral knees, and hands folded. “Something’s eating at you, isn’t it?”

“Was it that obvious? Ben must be disappointed.”

“Obi-Wan’s always been selectively oblivious to certain things he doesn’t know how to deal with. What is it?”

Luke carefully set the empty holocron down on the ground, expression searching. “So I was speaking with Ashoka and she mentioned that you had to keep your marriage to Mother a secret. She, Obi-Wan and someone named Captain Rex all knew, at least.”

His father nodded. “That was part of what drove me to the Dark Side, the pressure of keeping something as powerful as love bottled away for years. I wouldn’t recommend retaining that practice, the Masters broke it all the time. Hells, Master Mundi was part of an endangered species, so the Council let him have six wives! Six!” Anakin gestured angrily at the empty Sith temple. “Didn’t get attached my ass. But you had questions, Luke. Sorry.”

Luke was looking away, across the empty tombs and piles of gold. “The old Jedi order was Traditionalist about that, yes.” His body language looked deeply uncomfortable and his mechanical hand was opening and closing in slight gestures. “How did they feel about, well, non-traditional relationships?”

Anakin shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “They really didn’t care what kind of sex someone was having, they just tried to separate it from attachment. Attachment and loss supposedly led to hate, and all that rubbish. Granted, they had a point, a very small point, but I can tell you they went overboard. Most Masters let their Padawan’s relationships slide. We were in a war, after all.”

Luke was still looking uncomfortable and while Anakin had all the emotional depth of a brick, he’d spent enough time around his son to know more support was needed. “Take Ashoka, for example, she liked men and women. There was this whole complicated love triangle I pretended not to see on Onderon where she liked this ex-Separatist guy called Lux, and later on she had something, I think, with Bo-Katan Kryze, after she left the Order. Kanan Jarrus, one of the Jedi I had my Inquisitors hunt, had a kid during his time with the Rebellion. Not that Darth Vader was hunting him for that, though. Of course, there’s plenty of Jedi whose species don’t neatly fit onto a Human gender binary.”

Anakin didn’t have his wife or his Master’s way with words, but as he kept talking, filling Luke in on the gossip of a Jedi Temple twenty-five years gone, he saw his son’s shoulders relax, his rigid posture soften. Finally, after a pause in the conversation, Luke finally spoke, his eyes focusing somewhere over Anakin’s shoulder.

“So, there’s this girl…”

Anakin resisted the urge to grin and waggle his eyebrows, which took a surprising amount of willpower. “There often is.”

“She used to work for Palpatine, but she wasn’t an Inquisitor. We’ve run into each other, trying to track down Grand Admiral Thrawn, who disappeared during the Lothal Campaign. Calls herself the Emperor’s Hand, sound familiar?”

Anakin chuckled. “Oh yes, I am well familiar with Mara Jade. She and I loathed each other, competing for the Emperor’s favor. But Thrawn was just enough of a bastard to be likable, in his way.” He caught the worry on Luke’s face and hastened to add. “But perhaps Mara and I were too much alike to find common ground, if that makes sense. It’s not a mark against her.”

Anakin cast his mind back, trying to remember. He remembered nothing about Thrawn’s disappearance, and the death of a Grand Admiral was the kind of thing even Darth Vader would have taken note of. He remembered Galen Marek’s quiet voice.

 _Thousands of smaller futures are being shoved aside, devoured by a Leviathan_.

Luke ran his gloved prosthetic through his hair. “The thing is, she used to hate me too. Tried to kill me with her purple lightsaber more times than I could count, but lately…Well, I get the feeling it’s something else. She’s just as snappy as usual, but we’ve saved each other’s lives quite a bit and she implied-“

Luke blushed and Anakin tried to emit the benevolent patience many of the Jedi Masters had.

“Well, let’s just say she’s interested, but I’m not sure.”

“I see.” Anakin’s romantic experiences were admittedly limited, but he thought back to Ashoka’s own trials on Onderon and the miscommunications and significant looks three teenagers had kept throwing at each other. Not to mention the well, disagreements he and Padme had over the course of the Clone Wars. He certainly couldn’t give advice about seduction. By the Light, when he thought back to that Lake house on Naboo, he wanted to die all over again. So embarrassing, it was a miracle Padme had returned his affections at all.

“Have you told Mara of your uncertainty? In matters of the heart, as with the Force, you must trust your feelings above all. And her response would be telling, in either case.”

“I mentioned it,” said Luke gloomily. “She thought I was being a prude, that it was a Jedi thing, and stormed off. It felt like I offended her. What do you think I should do?”

“Well, how would you like this relationship to proceed? And don’t directly say you just want to be friends, that implies you’re both settling for less. Even I know that much.”

Luke gave a weak smile and stood to pace back and forth in the dimly lit chamber, the white light of the empty Holocron illuminating his movements. “She’s a Force-sensitive, a great fighter, and she has a skilled information network. I certainly don’t want her as an enemy, by the Force, part of the reason I was here in the first place was she said she’d visit my Academy once I got it up and running! Said she had a few tricks she could show my new students and learn a bit herself.”

Anakin threw his hands up. “Well, there you go! We’ve killed two mynocks with one blaster bolt here. With the Sith ghosts out of the way, you can build your training Temple here and get Mara to come back with the Academy as a fallback. If you two don’t hit it off, training others will keep you both distracted enough.”

When Luke looked uncertain, Anakin winked at him. “Trust me, curious Force-sensitives can get into all sorts of trouble, you’ll both have your hands full. And if things do work out, I’m pretty sure the sound in these caves won’t carry too far so-“

“Father!” Luke’s scandalized expression set him off and Anakin’s deep laughter boomed around the walls, a sound that dark place had not heard in a very long time.

Anakin trailed off as he felt Obi-Wan’s presence approach, solidifying into the other Force Ghost several feet away, expression unreadable. “Obi-Wan! How is Ashoka?”

His Master’s bearded face twitched with what might’ve been a smile, but it faded as he looked up. “She’s doing quite well, it seems. I was pleased to see you left her with all her limbs. Still, she’s not very excited to see you and asked for you to stay away for the time being.”

Now it was Anakin’s turn to slump, and he swallowed down the lump in his throat as his glow diminished. “I understand,” he said thickly. “Anything else?”

“I took the liberty of stopping in to see Leia, and she, at least, would like to see you. Something about holotapes and of course, your grandson.”

Anakin vanished almost as soon as the sentence was finished and both remaining Jedi felt his spirit disappear, racing across the lightyears in movement beyond physical space. Luke looked around. “So, Master Kenobi, not to bother you, but could you help direct me out of here? Father led me down here and I was so caught up in the conversation I got turned around.”

Obi-Wan gave a fond smile. “You really are like your father sometimes. Of course, provided you explain to me why Leia Organa and Han Solo decided to name their child after me.”

As they strode out of the chamber, Luke pocketed the Holocron. “Well Ben is what I normally call you, and considering they met on your mission to rescue her in the first place…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there's a bit less humor in this chapter, which I finally updated. After months and months. Major thanks to those who commented with support, inspiring me to keep going with this story. (We're not even to the Sequel Trilogy yet, yikes!) But we'll get there!  
> This chapter takes inspiration from many sources: The Sith and Naga Sadow come from the Old Republic comics set 10,000 years before the Prequel trilogy, while Luke investigating the ruins for his Jedi Academy is from one of the video games. Mara Jade is also from the post-RotJ novels in the 80's and 90's, as is Thrawn. Of course, in the Sequels, Mara's not mentioned, but Also wanted to include a critical question: Does Luke is the gay?  
> Because this would inevitably set off Internet Arguments, I elected to keep things vague. Personally,I'd like to think so (It's the Chanel boots), but he could also just be asexual or simply not interested in Mara at the moment. Mostly I just like Anakin awkwardly trying to work through Actual Parenting despite growing up with the Jedi Order. Ashoka's canonically bisexual, she has a brief relationship with a girl in her novel, Ashoka, and imo, that's fantastic. The world needs more openly bisexual characters and I can't imagine the galaxy getting hung upon gender preferences among thousands of different species.  
> I originally had the Leia reunion in this chapter as well, but decided to split it into the next chapter, ending"Ben" just felt like the right place for a chapter break. It's also funny because I don't know if there's canon answer for why Leia and Han named their kid after Obi-Wan in either New Canon or Legends. Han only knew him for like a day and Leia only by reputation thanks to Bail Organa. I blame Luke.


	7. Records and Remnants

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anakin meets his grandchildren and has a tea party. Leia must reckon with her father's past.

Leia Organa’s office was always busy, but the arrival of twins had only added to the clutter. Stacks of census files teetered next to an empty bassinet and scattered toys lurked in the corners and cubbies as well. Leia was nursing Jacen and attempting to follow a Senate budget report while Jaina slept. Anakin Skywalker materialized just outside the door just as Leia looked up and relief broke across her face. “Anakin, it’s good to see you. Luke tried to contact you for-“

Her father waved a hand to dismiss the subject. “No need to worry Leia, I just spoke with him, so all is forgiven.” He raised an eyebrow as Jacen’s head turned to stare at the glowing blue man in open-mouthed wonder and the baby made a curious noise. Anakin waved and was aware a goofy smile had spread across his features. “Hi there! Hi. I’m your grandfather, Anakin Skywalker, it’s nice to meet you.”

“Gah,” said the future Dark Jedi and turned back to his lunch. Leia sighed and met her father’s eyes.

“This is Jacen, and his sister Jaina is sleeping over there.” She indicated the crib with a gesture. “Thank you for coming, though I’m afraid my attention will be somewhat divided today.”

Anakin looked at her with a confused expression. “That’s odd, Luke said your son was named Ben?”

Now it was Leia’s turn to look puzzled. “He was there when we named them both, he wouldn’t forget something like that. Perhaps he simply said the wrong name.”

She visibly discarded the thought as a pilot in bright orange strode through Anakin’s invisible form. “Thank you ma’am,” she said. “Reports on the Imp remnants post-Jakku, as requested by the Committee.”

Leia nodded. “Thank you, commander. Ordinarily I’d rather you provide your own assessment, but well,” she gestured at Jacen, who burbled something around his mother. “I’m running double-duty.”

The pilot touched her forehead and departed as Anakin leaned against the wall, feeling the warm glow in his chest dim as a thought occurred to him. Galen Marek’s voice echoed in his head.

 _Planets will have their biomes change in the blink of an eye, hyperspace lanes will shrink, children will never be born._ He’d said something else, but Anakin couldn’t quite remember… 

“Leia, why haven’t you taken maternity leave. From the sound of things, you’ve more than earned it. And where’s Han?”

 _Not you too,_ came the thought, but Anakin intercepted it before Leia had realized her exasperation had leaked out from her mind. He crossed his arms and waited as his daughter sat in stubborn silence, an eerie echo of their encounter aboard the Death Star. Except this time there were babies instead of a torture droid. He lightened the mood considerably. Finally Leia gave in, but mostly because Jacen had fallen asleep in her arms. She stood, silently and carefully moving around the minefield of papers and scattered toys to place Jacen next to his sister. She rocked it slightly and moved back to her desk, where she collapsed into a chair looking like the walk had aged her ten years. “Alright, fine.”

Anakin sat down in one of the chairs, absently reaching out with the Force to keep the bassinet moving, ever so slightly. “What’s wrong, Leia?”

“Nothing’s wrong, exactly. I have twins, Han was sucked into the Liberation of Kasshyk, the New Republic’s just beat the pants off Imperial Remnants on Jakku, and we managed to buy the Katana Fleet off a smuggler for a respectable sum.” She kneaded her forehead, exhaustion leaking into the Force around her and causing Ben to squirm in his sleep. “It’s just, there’s a lot to do, and it’s a critical moment for the New Republic. I don’t exactly have time to take leave when there’s Imperial Warlords and crime syndicates springing up everywhere. The New Republic’s patchy and untested, scattered across the Middle and Outer Rim, while the Core Worlds are as fat and happy as ever. Mon Mothma and I had hoped the Remnant muster at Jakku would be enough to bind the galaxy to a common cause, but we were too optimistic.”

Anakin reached out and for once, Leia opened her mind to him and whispered through the Force what could never be said out loud. _I’m so tired._

 _That’s alright,_ he sent back. _Rest now, we can speak when you wake up. Here, I’ll show you a trick I used to use on myself in the field._

With her mind open to him, Anakin reached down and felt her exhaustion, physical and mental, a weight in her mind that slowed her thoughts and made her words harsher than intended. There was regret also, but he didn’t look too closely, simply pulling the exhaustion to the surface of his daughter’s mind and allowing her to drift off into slumber.

She slept for two hours and Anakin allowed her to sleep, even when Jaina woke up. Anakin was able to keep the child occupied with his best attempt at a soothing Force Presence, and felt the stirrings of a half-developed mind trying to reach back.

“You’re a very special girl, Jaina,” he whispered as the child grasped at insubstantial blue fingers. “Would you like to hear a story? I bet you would.”

Jaina’s eyes widened and she babbled something that to Anakin sounded and felt like agreement.

“Well, this one time, Captain Piett…”

He had just finished the story of the wandering dianoga and Captan Piett’s washroom when Leia woke up. “Who’s -oh, Anakin.” Her voice regained some of its sharpness and a tinge of disapproval tempered by experience. “I really should yell at you for making me fall even further behind on this work, but-“

“But you won’t.” Anakin’s voice was smug as he leaned back from the twins cradle. “You needed that sleep, it’s the least I can do. Might come in handy for when there’s teething, or something. But you need to learn how to take a break,” his voice turned serious, “or at least delegate. Take it from someone who was run ragged by a war.”

Jaina made grabby hands and Leia stepped over to pick her up, walking in circles around the room. “Yes, I’m sure it was exhausting chasing the Rebellion from system to system.”

Anakin bit back a retort. “Not remotely what I meant, but fine. If you don’t want to talk about it Leia, we don’t have to. I came here to help, remember? You said something to Obi-Wan about holotapes?”

Leia closed the door and pulled a few small rectangular items from her pocket. “Yes. Mon Mothma is still Supreme Chancellor of the New Republic, but she plans to retire in a few years and wants me to take her place.”

Anakin whistled. “That’s a big responsibility, even with all the constraints you’ve put in place on the office.”

“Yes, but we have a few years, like I said, to prepare. One of the ways we’ve been trying to do that is with these.” Leia plugged one of the rectangles into a holoprojector, revealing slightly fuzzy battle footage of Anakin Skywalker scything his way through droids, set to heroic music. A dramatic voice blared. _“Anakin Skywalker, the Hero with no Fear! The best of the Jedi Order, and a staunch champion for freedom…”_

The Force Ghost snorted. “Old Republic propaganda? Where’d you dig that out of?”

“The file the Emperor kept on you in the Imperial Palace,” said Leia calmly. “We’re putting your name and face out there, asking for information about you, under the pretense of trying to find surviving Jedi for a new Order.”

Anakin crossed his arms. “But what are you actually doing?”

“Creating a narrative.” Leia withdrew the first holochip and inserted the second, revealing a ravaged body on an operating table. It was missing limbs and burn tissue left his face a ravaged mess, but the medical droid identified it with ease.

“ _Mortician’s Log:_ _DNA Match, Anakin Skywalker. Program directive: Ensure loyalty and survival. Beginning reconstruction operation, by order of Sheev Palpatine.”_

Anakin was staring at the images in wide-eyed horror. He’d been conscious for some of it, but his memories had been hazy and drug-fouled. Now, he could see, not just feel. The mechanical hands, the artificially long legs of titanium, the explosive chip in his brain.

“Shut it off.”

Leia shut off the holoprojector and tried to mentally shield her daughter from the waves of horror coming off the Force Ghost as he flickered between blue, purple and red. His voice was strained, his breathing heavy. “What purpose could that possibly serve? What narrative?”

Leia swapped out the third holochip, which opened with images of Leia’s face and Darth Vader’s signature helmet, followed by rows of data and complicated charts. Jacen whimpered in his sleep and Anakin soothed him absently. “This is genetic data recovered from a mining asteroid called Pollis Massa, where Luke and I were born. Han and I were able to secure it, but someone else, we don’t know who, had copied it before us. Someone, out there can prove that Darth Vader was once Anakin Skywalker and that genetically, I am his, or rather, your daughter. It’s the kind of blackmail material politicians dream of.”

Anakin muttered something into his hand and Leia noticed he’d shifted distinctly red before unclenching his fist and taking a deep breath as she continued. “Senator Chuchi and I, among others, are trying to figure out how to manage this. the new Republic’s reputation is tenuous as it is, we don’t need one of our most prominent politicians tied to the worst of the Empire. No offense,” she added as an afterthought.

“None taken,” said Anakin, who had taken up a pacing circuit of the office, passing through chairs while Jaina watched his form flicker between blue and purple with interest. “Politicians.”

He made it sound like a curse. “I’ll be right back, let’s see what your mother has to say.” He flashed a grin that Leia could tell was forced. “Jaina, keep an eye on your mom for me.”

“Gah,” said Jaina as Anakin vanished.

He was gone for half an hour, time that Leia used to finish reading the report on the aftermath of the battle above Jakku. Jaina, oddly enough, was quiet, staring at her mother with Han’s huge dark eyes. Anakin reappeared and coughed politely to get Leia’s attention. “Whew, that was a lot. So be grateful your brother’s distracting Master Kenobi otherwise I’d never be able to put this past him, but Padme had some good advice.”

Leia nodded. “How is she?”

“She’s doing just fine, just misses you both,” said Anakin with a guilty look over his shoulder. “Okay, straight from the family expert, here’s what you should do…”

The late Courscant afternoon drained away as Anakin relayed his wife’s ideas to their daughter. Senators who could speak favorably of Anakin, who could be counted on to distinguish the father from the daughter, strategies to use for maximum media coverage, language choice, presentation advice and, to Leia’s surprise, outfit suggestions. “That can’t possibly be as useful as she thinks, can it?” Leia asked Anakin, who shrugged.

“You’re talking to the Jedi who once wore the same set of robes for three weeks during the Siege of Gdrun. For what it’s worth, try digging through Imperial records with Darth Vader on them. I used to consider myself a different person from Anakin Skywalker, even spoke about him that way. Or get Threepio or Artoo to do it, since you’re so busy. And Artoo, as you know, knows how to keep secrets.”

He gazed fondly at C-3PO, powered off in the corner, then fell silent as Leia absorbed what he’d told her. He’d been quiet for so long that Leia started when he spoke again.

“Did you ever meet Ashoka Tano?”

His daughter shook her head. “No, but Luke’s mentioned her. She was your student, correct? A Jedi?”

“Sometimes I wonder,” said Anakin, turning to look out the window. “I think she would have been like an older sister to you both. She has your fire, your passion, and Luke’s kind heart. But no. As she once told me, she no longer considered herself a Jedi. Maybe not one of the Old Jedi, perhaps, but the first of the New.”

His blue glow intensified as Jaina crawled through his ankles, swatting at the Force Ghost. “Somewhere between a friend and a daughter,” he mused to himself, “but considering…no, no that wouldn’t be wise. If she doesn’t want to see me, she certainly wouldn’t help Leia.”

He turned back around and Leia could see the self-recrimination on his features. “Sorry Leia, this old man is wallowing in his past again, when you’ve got a future to take care of.”

He bent down and focused with the Force , causing Jaina’s hair to blow as a breeze carried through the office disturbing only a few papers. ”All so my wonderful grandchildren can grow up in a galaxy without war, wouldn’t that be great?”

The girl beamed up at him and giggled.

“Speaking of taking care,” said Anakin as he straightened up, “Have you spoken with Luke lately? He seemed…” The Force Ghost chose his words unusually carefully. “Well, I think it would do you both good to speak. Sometimes the best solution to your problem is helping another solve theirs.”

Leia gave a wan smile. “When did you become so wise?”

“Turns out the Cosmic Force is a far more interesting teacher than Master Yoda.” Anakin felt a gentle, but insistent tug on his soul and realized his time in the world of the living was almost up. “And that’s my limit for now. Was there anything else you needed from your mother and I, before I go?”

Leia scooped Jaina back into her arms and held up a little hand in imitation of her own. “No, thank you. It’ll be tough for a while, but we’ll manage. Wave goodbye to your grandfather, Jaina.”

Anakin grinned and threw them a friendly salute before allowing himself to dissolve back into the Cosmic Force.

____________________________

If the Cosmic Force could be compared to anything, it would be an ocean. It had vast depths few Force Ghosts dared explore, stormy moods and calm seas. Currents weak and powerful, ebbing and flowing in response to the shifts in the Living Force, but at a much slower rate. The fragments of personality that had been Anakin Skywalker shivered as he swam through a part of the Force that was ice-cold and soaked his robes in despair and screams. A remnant of his assault on the Jedi Temple, perhaps. Or some other long-forgotten atrocity in the galaxy’s past. Anakin would’ve shuddered if he still had a body and kept going, aiming for the familiar shore where the dead congregated, where Padme was, no doubt trying to hide her anxiousness. But the cold current persisted, pulling him deeper into the Force, away from the familiar. Anakin struggled against it, focusing his will to move through the Force, but it was like fighting a storm. Even as the Force grew colder around him, Anakin kept going until his consciousness encountered a warm bubble, which he sank into with relief. The Force Ghost regained his form with a “pop” and shivered as he realized he was drenched in something cold, wet, and very slimy.

“Revan, that’s disgusting! Did you really have to drag him through all that? We could’ve parked the Ebon Hawk somewhere more pleasant. His first impression of us is absolutely on the wrong foot.”

“Meetra, you know I preferred to negotiate from a position of strength,” said a put-upon voice that nonetheless still sounded muffled. “We talked about this, don’t Carth this up.”

“I’m not Carthing anything, this is all you!”

Anakin shrugged off the top layer of his robe and the dark brown cloth hit the deck of wherever-this-was with a SPLAT!

“Oh feth, that’s him already.”

Anakin dragged something dark and slimy off his forehead as a small woman with dark hair bundled around the corner of what was clearly a starship. The instant she saw him, she began wringing her hands. “Oh Force, I’m terribly sorry about all this. Here!”

She gestured and Anakin’s robes were suddenly warm and cozy as if they’d just finished drying. The Jedi looked around. “Are we still in the Cosmic Force?”

The small woman winced, “I’m afraid so. But I’m forgetting my manners.” She held out a hand. “My name is Meetra Surik, welcome to the Ebon Hawk.”

Anakin shook her hand and blinked as the name and the contact jogged his memory. “Wait, the same Meetra Sulik who rebuilt the Jedi Order after the Devastation and the Mandalorian Wars? The Exile? That Meetra Sulik?”

She sighed and gestured for him to follow as she moved through the starship. “First, don’t call me that, I prefer my name. At least you’re a student of history?”

Anakin shrugged. “A bit. During the Clone Wars, I went through the Archives to find ideas for battle strategies against the Separatists, but the Mandalorian Wars were too dissimilar for the history books to be of much help.”

A sigh crossed Meetra’s lips again. “Oh, you two are going to get along like a flaming Corellian brandy.”

Anakin’s brain caught up with him and he grabbed Meetra, spinning her around. “Wait-“ The palm strike she reflexively threw shattered his nose and caused Skywalker to stumble back.

“Ungh, my node!”

Meetra hopped up and down on the spot. “Oh sorry, that was a reflex!”

“Meeeetraaa,” called a singsong voice from up ahead. “Are you Carthing it up?”

“No she’s not,” chorused Anakin and Meetra as Anakin willed his nose back to a non-broken state. Fortunately, the Cosmic Force seemed in an obliging mood as Anakin leaned down and whispered at the slight form of the Exile. “Are you telling me,” he whispered, with the glee of a young Padawan, “that’s Revan in there, The Prodigal Knight, actual Revan?”

Meetra’s smile was a mixture of bitter and fond. “Oh, please don’t gush like this in front of them,” she whispered. “If Revan’s head gets any more swelled, that mask’ll fall right off, which is always embarrassing.”

But her pleas fell on deaf ears as Anakin ran around the corner and his grin widened. A masked and hooded figure sat where the pilot’s chair had been, deep in a meditation pose.

“Finally,” said the figure. “I’ve wanted to meet you for quite a while, Anakin Skywalker.”

The masked figure looked sideways at Meetra.”You have blood on your tunic.”

“It’s his,” she said with embarrassment.

“Why, do you want it?” asked Anakin as he sat down. “You are Lord Revan, right? The best of the Jedi and the Sith, all that stuff.”

“Please don’t make this weird,” begged the masked figure. “Meetra, he’s making this weird.”

“Both of you shut up and drink this,” snapped the Exile, shoving small steaming cups of tea into first Anakin and then Revan’s hands. Anakin took a sip, then stared as Revan’s teacup passed through the mask seamlessly. “You’re staring again,” said the masked Jedi.

Anakin caught himself and remembered to blink. “Sorry Lord Revan,-“

“Just Revan, please. All those titles got old somewhere around the third or fourth galactic war.”

“I was just thinking about how much Obi-Wan would enjoy this tea,” he said.

“And that is exactly why I brought you here,” said Revan, setting aside the empty teacup. “Galen Marek has barred me from manifesting as a Force Ghost, so I’ve been forced to sit here, watching Jedi and Sith make the same mistakes, time after time. You are just the latest example, ‘Chosen One’”. Revan made quotation marks with their fingertips. “And yet, Marek dragged you into the World Between Worlds for a conversation alongside Kenobi and left you free to interfere with your children.”

“Revan’s jealous,” said Meetra with the ghost of a smile around her own teacup to Anakin’s right. “You’re an echo of them, or they’re an echo of you, yet Galen has allowed you significantly more freedom in your meddling while Revan remains under,” she indicated the Ebon Hawk around them, “house arrest.”

“Well, I have to ask, what did Revan do to be put under house arrest?” said Anakin looking nervously at the hooded figure who was seething in resentment. “I mean, I did all sorts of horrible things as Darth Vader, I’m not denying that, and even after the destruction of Alderaan the Force still let me become whatever we all are now.”

“I wanted to test a theory,” said Revan petulantly.

“You almost shattered the timeline,” snapped the Exile. “Now get to the point before I call Bastilla.”

The menacing aura around the masked figure disappeared with astonishing speed. “Fine. Look Skywalker, you can feel it can’t you? The currents in the Force, they’re changing, or being pushed aside. Something big is coming, even down here, we can feel it. Maybe it’s already here. Now Meetra,” he indicated the Exile who was pouring more tea, “can tell you that changes in the Force itself are usually bad news, especially big ones. So I was thinking, you’re unorthodox enough, just like me, that you’d hear my request out. I know Kenobi wouldn’t. Just give the Force a little nudge, just a bit, when you’re running around out there in the world of the living. Make sure the cycle doesn’t repeat for once.”

“Cycle?”

Revan waved their hand in a circular motion. “You know, powerful Jedi falls to the Dark, creates a Sith Empire of some sort, ushering in technological innovation and horrendous casualties, then getting redeemed in the Light, blah, blah, blah. I did it, you did it, Exar Kun did it, Bastilla kind of did it, it’s dull. Frankly, the people of the Galaxy could use a break.”

Anakin sipped his tea, mind working through the possibilities, searching for strings attached to the idea. Revan had been a Knight of the Jedi Order, but he’d been a Sith as well, and the Exile suggested that there was a perfectly good reason he’d been isolated down here. “So, how would you suggest I do that, then?”

The robed figure shrugged. “Talk, I suppose. That’s where I’ve found all my best successes. Wait no, my best successes were from planetary bombardments and cluster mines. Never mind.”

Anakin shot them a look. “You’re not what I was expecting.”

“That’s why I’m Revan” said the figure smugly. “I’ve been everything. Ideally, you do a little detective work for me while you’re out there, get that brain of yours working. Now, first question: Before you died and passed into the Cosmic Force, had you ever heard my name spoken out loud? Written down?”

“Well of course I did, I told Meetra I used to study your campaigns during the Clone Wars!”

The mask tilted to the side. “Did you?”

Anakin clutched at his head as memories of the Jedi Archives and improvised battlefield tactics warred with one another. “Wait, no. No I didn’t?”

He turned to Meetra, with a look of confusion. “I have two sets of memories, studying in the Jedi Archives. One of them has a history of the Mandalorian Wars, the Jedi Civil War, and all the rest, but the other…doesn’t.”

“I thought so,” she said as Revan cursed. “You never knew who we were until you stepped inside the Ebon Hawk, our own little bubble of Force memory.” She patted the flooring in an affectionate manner. “The old girl’s tough as a cortosis axe, with plenty of memories between the two of us.”

“Well, Galen Marek needed something that would stay tangible at this depth,” admitted Revan. “It’s an impressive piece of memory reconstruction, having us jail ourselves.”

“I can leave whenever I want,” said Meetra. “I’m just staying to keep an eye on you, Rev.” She pointed at Anakin, who was staring off into the distance, eyes unfocused. “See, you broke his brain. This is just like that time you tried to reconstitute HK-47 out of the Force and created a Force-Sensitive astromech by mistake.”

“I missed him,” protested Revan as the Exile threw her teacup at them. It bounced off the Mandalorian mask and landed in Anakin’s lap. “The astromech committed suicide in front of Owen Lars,” she said flatly. “T3 would be ashamed of you.”

“T3 was practically a Sith Lord,” said the hooded figure.

“No, they were a cheerful little astromech with-Oh Force.”

Anakin blinked as a horrified silence descended. “You hear that?”

Something rumbled through the Force outside, big enough to make the Ebon Hawk shudder around them. “It’s here,” breathed Revan. “Timelines are changing around it, we’ve lingered here too long. Skywalker, can you help me fly this thing?”

“I can fly anything,” said Anakin confidently. “I once made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.” He broke off, horrified as memories of a daring heist and a much younger Han Solo cascaded through his mind. “What’s-“

Meetra Surik bodily threw Skywalker into the copilot’s seat and dashed from the cabin, arms full of dishes. Her teacup spilled from her arms and shattered on the floor, even as an identical translucent teacup fell and shattered over and over behind her, a silent echo of the destruction.

“I’ll guide us back to the shallows,” said Revan in a voice that was far too calm for whatever was happening. “Closer to linear time. We’ve done this before, so don’t worry. You just focus on when in time you need to be and we’ll get there. General Surik and I will keep the ship together.”

The Ebon Hawk groaned and somehow, the impassive mask looked worried. “Mostly together.”

Anakin twisted his hands around a well-worn steering yoke and veered away from whatever massive thing was above them. “Watch a master work then.”

The small ship outlined in white and orange, weaved through the Cosmic Force as easily as it had danced through the stars. The scanners showed a vast black mass above and slightly behind them and Anakin danced around projectiles as it, whatever it was, hungered for them. “How is something shooting at us in the Cosmic Force?” he asked.

“It’s all a metaphor, that’s what I keep telling myself,” gasped Revan as they threw the Ebon Hawk into a barrel roll to avoid a salvo of dark intent. “Marek would know more but I told that bastard to shove his twin lightsabers all the way up-“

The rear of the Ebon Hawk shattered as a spear of pure darkness flooded the crew compartment. Meetra swore vociferously as she gestured and the ruined ship began to rebuild itself from nothing. Watching it, even in the rearview mirror, gave Anakin another headache.

As they flew, he felt a burden, a weight he had not even consciously felt, begin to lift from his shoulders. “I think we’re getting closer to the present,” he called over and Revan’s mask nodded in understanding as their hand hovered over a large red button labeled “In case of heroic sacrifice eject co-pilot. Carth remains on board.”

“So who is this Carth?”

Revan pressed the button and waved as Anakin Skywalker was launched from the ship and back into the Force. “A question for when I get my history back.”

Meetra cleared her throat as she staggered back into the cabin and the masked figure hunched over. “Our history, I mean. Yeah, that’s it.”

As it turned out, being ejected from a memory construct and the rest of the Cosmic Force hurt. Anakin collided with something, face-first, and groaned. This was unfair. Force Ghosts shouldn’t be getting hurt this much. Sure, he’d signed up for emotional pain, having his children and various family members tug on his heartstrings, but physical pain was unexpected. Wasn’t the whole point of being a ghost _avoiding_ physical pain?

Anakin stood up and was suddenly very, very glad it took effort for a Force Ghost to enter the visible spectrum, because he’d arrived in Ashoka Tano’s bedroom. He could tell, because she was sound asleep, tangled in bedsheets with Bariss Offee. Back to the Cosmic Force it was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll admit, this chapter is entirely stolen by the KotOR protagonists. Revan is very fun to write, and I elected to keep them non-binary to add to the air of mystery. (Anyone's Revan can be canon, after all.) Meetra Sulik is the canon name of the Exile in KotOR2, so I adopted that as well. 
> 
> Jaina and Jacen Solo are the Skywalker children in the Legends continuity, where Jacen, iirc, takes a very similar path to Kylo Ten, except that he was an Undercover Jedi the whole time. My knowledge of the old EU is patchy, but that's what Wookiepedia is for. Grand Admiral Thrown started out in Legends, and migrated over in Star Wars:Rebels, he's the Rommel of Star Wars, for good and ill. :/  
> Leia's subplot is something that happens in the background of the Disney canon, to explain why she isn't leading the New Republic. Personally, I think it's BS, now that we've seen politicians do 10x more horrible things personally and face no consequences. Any good PR firm could have gotten Leia through the revelation of her parentage easily. The Force-sensitive astromech is a reference to a very stupid comic where the red astromech that dies in A New Hope so R2 could go with Luke was actually Force-sensitive and committed suicide to save the galaxy. Blech, even when I typed that I feel vaguely dirty. 
> 
> This chapter also sees the arrival of Disney, if you were wondering what the vast black mass is. It's Mouse Ears.


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